Does Your Printer Make You Sad?

Does Your Printer Make You Sad?

August 4th, 2010 @ 5:58 pm by Mrs. Lobster
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I had a near meltdown with my printer last night.

I’m in the home stretch. I’m trying to keep things simple. I just want to print simple menus on white paper on my home printer. I should have known better.

The Lobster-hating printer gave me grief when I printed our invitation envelopes and RSVP envelopes and it would print these phantom dashed lines on the edge of everything. So I had to hand feed all of them. That would be 100 outers, 100 inners, and 100 RSVP envelopes… with THIS wonky fix:

You can see that I reused this post-it multiple times.

The Lobster-hating HP Photosmart C—something that I got with my MacBook Pro—is out to get me. Why, why must you cause me so much pain:

Does Your Printer Make You Sad? : wedding brooklyn diy stationery Tw603 Av1 TW603_AV1

You hate me.

Last night I spent 4 hours trying to test print our menus. Not only do I refuse to hand feed 120+ menus again, but I’m trying to print a border and can’t even use my Post-It fix.

I’ve Googled. I’ve reset the printer settings. Then I thought it was printing photo crop marks but didn’t see a setting for that. (It doesn’t help that I don’t really know how to use my Mac). I tried to trick it by making the print page bigger than the paper. None of that worked.

I turn to you now, hive. Has anyone out there had to fix these random dashes on their HP Photosmart? Anyone?

Tags: brooklyn, diy, stationery |

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26 Responses to “Does Your Printer Make You Sad?”

1 2 Last

Member

neontl (message) 1,135 posts, Bumble bee

It makes me wonder if the feeder itself it tracking the ink. Sometimes, I know that the printer at the office prints these phantom lines, and we have to wipe down the actual rollers that pulls in the paper and that fixes it. Have you tried to do that?

8/4/10 @ 6:10 pm (reply)

Member

sapphirebride (message) 1,747 posts, Bumble bee

Have you tried cleaning the print head nozzles? I don’t have the same printer, but my printer has both a “clean” and a “deep clean” setting under maintenance that usually helps when I start getting stray lines across the page.

8/4/10 @ 6:12 pm (reply)

Member

dance (message) 1,607 posts, Bumble bee

Brutal… seriously how frustrating is THAT? As if you don’t have enough stress with just getting the things printed….

My suggestion is similar to the PP - try using a Q-tip to clean off the ink from any areas where ink shouldn’t be. Examples include: the rollers that feed the paper, the ink cartridges where the ink comes out, and the actual part that moves across the printer to put the ink on the page. Good luck!

8/4/10 @ 6:16 pm (reply)

Member

tnason (message) 140 posts, Blushing bee

Start taking things apart and cleaning them. You’ve got ink (or dirt) somewhere it shouldn’t be.

8/4/10 @ 6:16 pm (reply)

Member

SandraMarie_1986 (message) 1,363 posts, Bumble bee

I hear ya! Mine drives me crazy. I’m gonna go an try neontl’s suggestion.

8/4/10 @ 6:19 pm (reply)

Bee

Miss Oyster (message) 879 posts, Busy bee

I got a very similar printer with my iMac and entertained Mr. Oyster one night as I got increasingly angry at it for repeatedly eating my invitation labels. I believe it is a piece of junk.

8/4/10 @ 6:22 pm (reply)

Member

crayfish (message) 4,844 posts, Honey bee

I say march yourself down to Kinkos and be done with it…your bridal sanity is too precious to spend additional full evenings on this!

8/4/10 @ 6:24 pm (reply)

Member

iggies (message) 518 posts, Busy bee

this happened with our canon when i tried to print our envelopes as well. we resorted to buying a brand new printer. we think it had to do with the fact that our print head was super dirty and there was just nothing we could do to fix it.

8/4/10 @ 6:27 pm (reply)

Member

absolutbettie (message) 261 posts, Helper bee

My advice–outsource it!! Get yourself to a kinkos (or an AlphaGraphics in NYC) stat! If it’s something simple and straightforward, it won’t be very expensive and the amount it will save you in frustration at this point is priceless!

8/4/10 @ 6:33 pm (reply)

10.

Member

ohnyc (message) 133 posts, Blushing bee

I agree with the outsourcing. Kinkos and related companies do printing really fast and cheap. You can even set it all up online!

8/4/10 @ 6:55 pm (reply)

11.

Bee

Mrs. Cola (message) 2,868 posts, Sugar bee

Ugh, I have no advice on how to fix yours, but I feel your pain! I did our STDs on a 12 year old printer, and it was a huge pain. I bought a new printer after that, and it was a better investment than the other wedding gadgets I wanted, like a cricut or gocco.

8/4/10 @ 7:04 pm (reply)

12.

Bee

Miss Earrings (message) 2,477 posts, Buzzing bee

I had to handfeed all our invites! It drove me NUTS. I dont know how to fix yours, sorry

8/4/10 @ 8:16 pm (reply)

13.

Bee

Mrs. Pug (message) 3,753 posts, Honey bee

argh that is so frustrating. i like the suggestions to clean the feeder rolls–but if that turns out to be a pain maybe outsource it? or shake your finger vigorously at your printer and tell it to behave.

8/4/10 @ 9:12 pm (reply)

14.

Member

jlp2w71611 (message) 298 posts, Helper bee

I don’t have any ideas but good luck & this stinks!

8/4/10 @ 9:50 pm (reply)

15.

Bee

Mrs. Trail Mix (message) 6,328 posts, Bee Keeper

I can’t help you but if it makes you feel any better, I frequently day-dreamed about taking a baseball bat to my printer a la Office Space!

8/4/10 @ 10:06 pm (reply)

16.

Bee

Mrs. Trail Mix (message) 6,328 posts, Bee Keeper

Oh, also, can’t you just print ‘em at work??

8/4/10 @ 10:07 pm (reply)

17.

Member

mizz bam (message) 5 posts, Newbee

I have this same printer! It’s horrible, I truly feel your pain. By chance, do you have the document in “landscape” mode when you’re printing? If so, try changing to portrait. That’s the only advice I have that fixed one of my problems.
I tried printing on pre-cut paper with the borderless setting, it was a nightmare. I landed up printing on 8.5×11 cardstock and hand cutting everything. Basically any “special” setting would totally screw up the job. Yes, it does make me sad because my old printer didn’t work with Vista, this one was supposed to be my “upgrade”.

8/4/10 @ 10:49 pm (reply)

18.

Bee

Miss Glasses (message) 2,741 posts, Sugar bee

I can’t help, although we have an HP All-In-One and their website has a pretty thorough troubleshooting section and a pretty active forum. My printer hates me (or my Mac). It’s alright with Mr. G’s though. For me, it just spits out pages without printing until it runs out of paper. I secretly think it’s racist.

8/4/10 @ 11:05 pm (reply)

19.

Member

Krispy1327 (message) 182 posts, Blushing bee

I so wish I could help…but I also don’t know how to really mes with my mac and printer functions…It makes me very sad…I actually had to TAPE the STD envelopes to a ‘mock’ page and feed the page through each time…then again for the rtn address on the back…I so wish I had better handwriting! best of luck though!!

8/5/10 @ 1:50 am (reply)

20.