Printing to multiple trays on 4250 printer

[dmvdmv]

Does anyone know of a way to have something print to multiple printer trays? We want to print the same thing to 4 different trays on the 4250N (different color paper in each one).
I was told there may be some kind of print codes that get sent to the printer just before it prints that would include which tray it should go to. Is this true? Has anyone done this, or know what those codes are?

Thanks a lot,
diane

 

[jlasman]

There are certainly PCL codes to print from a specific tray; however, the code must be issued immediately before any printable data is sent for that particular page. So your application will have to keep track of what you want. Explain what you are doing a bit more.

Do you have four different paper sources installed on your printer?

If you are simulating a 4-part carbon, then you might look a buying paper that is packaged in repeating sets of four and you could print from a single tray.


Jim Asman

http://www.spectracolorservices.com

 

[dmvdmv]

Our client wants to have their invoices print in 4 different colors (one copy for salesman, one for customer,etc.).
The multi color paper is not a bad idea as long as you don't ever get out of sync.

Would you know those PCL codes or where I could get them?

thanks,
Diane

 

[jlasman]

The input tray select command is in the form

<esc>&l#H

The <esc> represents the escape character 0x1b hex or chr(27) in decimal.That is a lower case ell. Substitute the # with the appropriate numeral.

The tray numbers you will need should be 1, 4, 5, and 8 OR 1, 2, 4, and 5. Look in the manual to verify this for your printer. I don't have a 4 tray printer to verify.

There is more to it than just specifying a tray number. For example, what should the printer do if the tray is empty. In this case, you want the printer so stop and prompt the user to put paper in the appropriate tray.

In the control panel on the printer, you can "lock out" each tray, and then the printer will only pull from that tray if the appropriate tray select command is given.

By default the printer will look for another tray with the same size paper. Not what you want.

Jim Asman

http://www.spectracolorservices.com

 

[dmvdmv]

Jim-

Wow, thanks for all that info. I will pass this on to my developers. I'll let you know if we get it to work. Hopefully I won't need to bug you again.

Diane

 

[assets]

If you are usind developers they can write a macro in VB that will select the required tray for each page.

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