Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

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RWL
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Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by RWL »

I am trying to print a disc with curving text. The text at the very top is being cut off in the center. On either side the tops of the letters extend to within 3/8" of the periphery, but at the "12:00" position the letters are not printed for 1/2" from the periphery, cutting off the tops of the letters. The attached photo illustrates the problem. I have done an alignment check on my printer and a test print to check the nozzles and both tests are correct. The disc surface does not look any different in that location than elsewhere, so I don't think it's a problem with the discs themselves, plus the problem is always in the 11:00 - 12:00 - 1:00 area on the 10 discs I've printed so far. The "boundaries" of the disc are set to 118 mm and 25 mm in Label Maker 3.40. There have been two entirely different discs printed and both show the same loss of letters at the top of the disc. It doesn't seem to be anything funky with just a single project. The printer is a Canon MG5420. The printer and software have never done this before. Any thoughts?
Attachments
Illustrates CD/DVD printing problem
Illustrates CD/DVD printing problem
01 CD printing problem - Uncle Jim's Stories-cropped (Large).jpg (135.67 KiB) Viewed 17195 times
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Acoustica Greg
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

Are you using the "Canon MG5400 Series" template in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker's Paper Type setting? Have you tried running the nozzle cleaning routine for your printer?

Greg
RWL
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by RWL »

It was set for Canon MG5420 Printable CD/DVD. I did not do a nozzle clean since the nozzle check was OK and other printing has been OK. I have just changed the setting to Canon MG5420 Full Printable CD/DVD to see if that will make any difference, but I don't need to print another set of DVD's until I get the next video edited, so I don't know if that will change anything. I don't know why that has suddenly occurred. It had been printing on discs without a problem previously. I have not tried reinstalling the software.
mrdhelpston
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by mrdhelpston »

You could just print your labels on plain paper to see whether it now works?
RWL
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by RWL »

mrdhelpston wrote:You could just print your labels on plain paper to see whether it now works?
I just tried that. I set the paper type to CD Stomper Slim sheet CD and it printed fine on the plain paper from the bottom tray. I think that confirms the print head isn't blocked or being starved of ink.
RWL
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by RWL »

I had another disc to print today. I set it to Canon MG5420 FULL Printable CD/DVD this time instead of just Printable CD/DVD. It worked; there was no cutoff of the letters at the top of the DVD. I'm hesitant to say the problem is solved because I don't know what caused it in the first place, but so far so good.
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Acoustica Greg
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

The other thing to check if the problem persists is whether your printer has a "media" setting. Some printers adjust the ink nozzle output for different surfaces.

Greg
RWL
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by RWL »

Under printer preferences I see settings for Standard, Photo, Business Document, Paper Saving, and Envelope. On mine at least, I can't spot any place to choose a Media setting, but that was a good thought and may help someone else who reads this thread in the future.
RWL
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by RWL »

This seems to be a printer problem, but I can't figure out how to fix it. I needed to add some text to several disks, and the printer cut off the first few words. I thought that setting the choice to Full Printable CD/DVD had fixed the problem, but that wasn't to be. I tried a nozzle cleaning procedure, and that didn't fix it either. It's not related to which side of the disk is being printed as you'll see below.
Attachments
00 Right side not printing (Large).JPG
00 Right side not printing (Large).JPG (125.79 KiB) Viewed 17106 times
00 Left side not printing (Large).JPG
00 Left side not printing (Large).JPG (129.09 KiB) Viewed 17106 times
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Acoustica Greg
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

Do you have a different band of printable discs you can try? Or just a different batch?

Greg
RWL
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by RWL »

I just tried a music CD of unknown brand whose surface was blank and it printed fine. I also tried a Staples CD of unknown manufacturer and printed my DVD label on it. That too printed fine. I suppose it's possible that there's something peculiar about the DVD disks causing me problems (Verbatim Data Life Plus, White Hub Printable), but it seems unusual that this would begin to occur in the last third of the remaining discs on the spindle. The lack of printing always seems to be in the first few lines of the text, leading me to believe that it's a printer problem. If this was a problem in communication between Acoustica Label Maker and this model of printer, I would have thought that it might have been reported here previously. A two disc test doesn't confirm that it's the surface of the discs because some of the Verbatim discs from this part of the spindle did come out OK. I couldn't spot anything different in the appearance of the surface of the offending discs. I guess time will tell. I'll be interested in hearing if anyone else has ever had a similar experience and how they solved it.
RWL
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by RWL »

The problem continues. I'm wondering if it may be a problem with the Acoustica software or the printer driver they use for this printer. Frequently the top half of the letters are cut off or the beginning of a line is cut off. This occurs in a random fashion at various places on the disk. It's not just at the 12:00 position.

I tried reprinting a disk without removing it from the tray - the areas that weren't printed still don't fill in. It looks like the printer is being told not to print those areas.
The nozzles are clean - I cleaned them before printing, and a test page is fine. If this were an ink starvation problem, it should be showing up preferentially at the end of lines rather than at the beginnings.
Since the last time I posted, I overwrote my hard drive and installed Windows 10. This is occurring in both Windows 7 and Windows 10, so it's not a corrupted operating system file.

In the printer properties setup, it's set to Media Type: Printable disk (recommended); Printer Paper Size: Disk tray J; Print Quality: High; Paper Source: Disk tray.
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Acoustica Greg
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

The problem is not in Acoustica CD/DVD Label Maker. If the print nozzles are clean, you may just have some printable discs that don't hold the ink well. What happens if you lower the print quality setting instead of using the highest quality setting?

Greg
Mixcraft - The Musician's DAW
Check out our tutorial videos on YouTube: Mixcraft 10 University 101
RWL
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by RWL »

The brand of disk doesn't change anything. As you'll see in the photos below, Taiyou Yuden and Staples brand disks print about the same. There are no other choices in the drop down box when Media Type: Printable disk is chosen, so I can't try Standard quality printing. I tried using Printable Disk (recommended) and Printable Disk (others), and the printing is the same. A clue might be that fading also occurs when the entire project is saved as a jpg and then the jpg is printed as the lable. The radial print smearing in two of the photos is from putting the disk in the CD player and it spinning up before the ink was dry; that's something easily correctable.
Attachments
Disk printed from a jpg of the label
Disk printed from a jpg of the label
05 Disk done from jpg of lable (Large).JPG (245.54 KiB) Viewed 13618 times
Nozzle Check - no problems here
Nozzle Check - no problems here
04 Test Print - Nozzle Check (Large).JPG (167.67 KiB) Viewed 13618 times
Staples brand disk - Printable Disk (others) Note printing of photo on clear hub area
Staples brand disk - Printable Disk (others) Note printing of photo on clear hub area
03b Staples disk - Printable Disk [others] (Large).JPG (192.02 KiB) Viewed 13618 times
Staples brand disk - Printable Disk (recommended)
Staples brand disk - Printable Disk (recommended)
02 Stapels brand disk - Printable disk [recommended] (Large).JPG (343.52 KiB) Viewed 13618 times
Taiyo Yuden - 4 sequential prints on same disk
Taiyo Yuden - 4 sequential prints on same disk
01 Four sequential prints without removing disk - Taiyou Yuden (Large).JPG (322.29 KiB) Viewed 13618 times
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Acoustica Greg
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Re: Disc text being cut off at "12:00" position

Post by Acoustica Greg »

Hi,

If you print the label on plain paper, does it print correctly?

Greg
Mixcraft - The Musician's DAW
Check out our tutorial videos on YouTube: Mixcraft 10 University 101
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