Enhanced Print Quality setting seems to offset second page during double-sided printing

[adshort]

An amazingly quick response from an international company. I phoned support yesterday. This morning the engineer was in my house for two hours, having researched the issue online.

He spent some time on the phone to "second level support" and installed slightly updated firmware,  v61.006.10.000 It did not help. After trying a number of settings, none of these helped.

He left promising a resolution, surprised that the issue had not previously been reported.

My  Phaser 3330 is the printer-only version, The WorkCentre 3335/3345 is the version that includes a scanner but the firmware is not shared

[adshort]

This problem still exists for my Phaser 3330.

I updated my firmware according to the device website with v61.004.04.000. The problem remained.

Your link readme had a link to a later version v61.006.08.000 (SMP3R3), which I installed. Still the problem remained.

Naturally enough, the workstation firmware would not install on my device (I tried).

So I need another firmware upgrade. Can one be found that would solve this?

[mikechurch · Accepted solution]

So I have now received a new firmware that fixes this problem. It's taken almost five months, but at least it has been fixed.

For anyone else using A4 paper on WorkCentre 3335/3345, the new firmware is available here:

https://www.support.xerox.com/en-us/product/workcentre-3335-3345/content/150985?language=en&platform... 

[mikechurch]

Yes, I've tried that. No joy.

In any case, the fault occurs only in double-sided A4 print in Enhanced mode. In Standard mode, the second page registers fine. So any image shift option that should apply only on the second page of Enhanced quality printing would be mad.

Also, double-sided Enhanced mode printing on US Letter paper works fine.

Basically, this is a behaviour that applies only when printing on A4 paper size. Weird how a printer designed in the USA should only work properly when printing on US Letter paper, eh?

[TonyP-Xerox]

Have you checked the print driver options to see if you have an image shift option? I don't have your same device but my C405 has an image shift option where I can offset the image to make sure that the image prints correctly. 

[mikechurch]

And technical support have advised me to update the firmware to the latest version (due for general release soon).

Guess what?

No change. It still offsets the 2nd pages of double-sided printing on A4 in Enhanced quality.

The printer's firmware or driver is faulty. A printer that doesn't register its printing in the right place on the paper is just not a printer.

Two months now since I first reported the issue, and still Xerox seem reluctant to own the issue and schedule a fix.

[mikechurch]

Oh dear. I have now received and installed the replacement Xerox WorkCentre 3345 - and it exhibits exactly the same problem as the one that it replaced.

In other words, this particular printer model has a fault in its design. Firmware or driver, I'm not sure, but a fault nonetheless.

I will be contacting customer support imminently to request a fix, and maybe some redress.

[mikechurch]

Just as an experiment, I decided to try printing a two-page A4 document as a two-sided output in Enhanced mode, but with the paper size set at "Letter" (the usual US paper size). Guess what? The second side was not displaced at all - both pages of the printed document were centred on the paper the same way on both sides. (I mean, the margins were applied for Letter paper rather than A4, so it was printed incorrectly - but at least the margins were equally wrong on both sides of the printout).

This might suggest that the firmware on the printer was tested only on US paper sizes. Those tests will have passed, of course. Testing on European paper sizes (in this case A4) probably wasn't done. If so, whoops (and I'm guessing the replacement printer I'm going to receive on 5th January will exhibit the self-same problem).

[mikechurch]

Well, it has taken over a month, but Xerox have finally arranged to despatch a replacement printer. I hope it will be with me before the Christmas holiday, but I'm expecting that it will be after. I'll let you know if the replacement printer shows the same problem.

[mikechurch]

The hardware swap-out did not fix the problem. Even after downgrading the firmware to an earlier version (suspecting that the latest firmware has a problem), the problem persists.

So now the printer has been declared "DOA" (Dead On Arrival), and Xerox have agreed to replace this printer with a new instance of the same model. Hopefully that one won't have the reported problem, because if it does, that would suggest a fault with the printer design or (more likely) a fault with the latest firmware.

FYI, a technician at Xerox is planning to test another instance of the same printer model to see if the problem is reproduceable in the workshop.

I'll let you know the outcome once the printer is replaced.