Margins as printed don't match what I've set up

[ldhaber135]

I could use some help printing to a non-standard paper size to a defined area within the page. I am printing individual pages from my document.

I’m using an Epson P700 printer. The paper measures 29.8 cm high and 27 cm wide. I need a margin from the left of 6.6 cm, from the top and bottom of 1.9 cm, and from the right of 2.2 cm.

In my Document Setup, all this is entered. Visually, I see all this, and it looks good. It all measures correctly, using a ruler on my screen.

I have placed lines at the edge of all my margins to check my setup. I also placed a vertical center line. Visually, everything looks good on my screen.

When I print, I have lines printed outside of my defined margins—3 mm to the left, 3 mm above the top and 1 cm inside bottom margin.  The line on the right is not printing, probably because the printer thinks it is outside the margin. And, a center line is 1 cm too far to the right. 

I am using a Mac. In my setup for the paper on my Mac, the height and width are entered. I have left the margins at 0 since I presume my print driver will handle this.

I’m sorry if this sounds weird, but this is very puzzling for me, and I’d really appreciate some help.

TIA,

Larry

[Robert at ID-Tasker]

You've extra bleed 3mm. 

[rob day]

Hi @ldhaber135 , Also, you can choose to include bleeds or not in the Print dialog’s Marks and Bleeds tab (see Bleed and Slug panel)

[ldhaber135]

Thank you very much. I have removed all bleeds, and it makes no difference.  (I think that is because the bleed affects the paper edge, not the placement of items within the field to be printed with the margins set in from the edge.)

I do appreciate your response.

[rob day]

I have removed all bleeds, and it makes no difference.

How did you remove the Bleeds? From Document Setup or did you set them to 0 in the Print dialog?

[rob day]

Also, you’ve set the Document size to the paper dimensions. The Document setup should be to the page’s trimmed size, and the Paper dimension is set in the print driver. Here the Document Page’s trim size is setup as your 29.8 x 27 with Crop Marks, and in the driver I set the Paper Size I’m are printing on—48cm x 60cm in this example :

Unless your printer is capable of printing edge to edge, the Paper Size has to be larger than the document trim plus any Marks and Bleeds

[Willi Adelberger]

Are you aware that changes of the margins are done in Menu > Layout > Margins &Colums…?

Do these changes on the Master/Parent and all pages and masters/parents based on them will inherit those changes. 

[ldhaber135]

I'd like to thank you all for your help. The problem does not appear to be with my document setup but rather with the printer itself. The P700 has a keypad in which certain setup features are entered, including the paper size. I presumed that all this would be "over-written" by my print drivers and document setup, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Please remember I'm using non-standard paper. The printer was set for letter-sized paper. That was a conflict. When I manually set the paper size on the printer keypad, the result was almost there. My registration to the paper was off by 5mm, which I can adjust to. 

What I have to do is sit down and have a long review of the user manual. As we used to say, RTFM (directed towards myself.)

Thanks to all of you. I really appreciate your efforts.

Best,

Larry

[rob day]

The P700 has a keypad in which certain setup features are entered, including the paper size. Please remember I'm using non-standard paper.

If the driver allows it Page Setup should give you an option to setup a custom size, which can then be selected as a Paper Size:

[Willi Adelberger · Accepted solution]

I would strongly recommend to export a PDF first and print from Acrobat. There choose the option not to scale pages. The prints will be centered. 
Even if you have to export a PDF  it will be in many cases faster than printing from InDesign. 

[ldhaber135]

Thank you. This is very good advice and worked perfectly.  I really appreciate the time you spent helping me.