[Gregg Roberts]

A user group that I support has been printing to tractor-feed labels, 1-7/16"
x 4", one column on an old IBM mainframe printer. Print jobs are sent to a
print queue so an operator can feed the labels into it before starting the
job. I've managed to find all the right settings to move this process to HP
network printers, except for what happens when the end of a "page" is
reached. The printer is assuming that I'm using separate sheets of paper, so
it "waits" per page -- and pulls an entire "page" through -- instead of just
continuously printing and pulling the labels in until all the merged records
have been printed. I haven't tested it with the actual labels yet; I'm
testing with plain paper. But based on what happens with a legal-sized sheet
when I've told it that there are only four labels per page, it would keep
pulling the labels into the printer until it saw "daylight", meaning it would
pull an entire box of fanfolded labels through, but only print on the first
page.

If I were to reprogram the manual feed setting on the manual feed tray to
Off, then it might stop waiting for daylight, but it would also not wait for
me to feed the labels in the first place. Maybe users could be instructed to
prime the printer with labels in the manual feed tray BEFORE clicking Print,
but if they forget that one step, they'll have to reprint the first X labels
because there won't be any labels being fed when the printer first starts.
Also, some users will surely leave the manual feed setting in the nonstandard
position, causing issues for the next user of the manual feed tray.

I'm also not sure that the printer has enough rollers to keep the labels
aligned properly for a 1200-label run. Even if the box is pretty well
aligned, it seems that the typical office printer might not be well-designed
for this specialty use.

Any ideas on how to handle all these issues, short of researching and buying
a specialty printer for every department?

Gregg Roberts