Basic Fabric Printer Tutorial

This tutorial will talk you through using SmartPrint to send a print to the fabric printer and controlling the 'print queue' to the printer.

1. You will need to log into the computer with a special login:
1. Username: .\smartprint
1. Please put the .\ before the word 'smartprint'
2. Password: smartprint
2. Put your USB Pendrive into the machine
3. Your image is best off in the .TIFF format
1. To convert to this format (as opposed to JPEG) load Photoshop
2. Open your image
3. In the menu system, click on Image > Image Size
4. resize your image to the size you would like it printed to
1. Make sure the 'Resolution' is set to 200 Dots Per Inch (DPI) (as opposed to Dots per CM)
5. Click OK to resize it.
6. In the menu system click: File > Save As
7. Select TIFF from the list of formats
8. Click OK when asked more questions.
4. Load up "SmartPrint"
1. Icon is at the bottom
5. It will present you with a set width canvas which is dark gray
1. each fabric is a different width. Measure your fabric
2. To resize the width of the canvas click: File > Layout
3. Edit the 'width' to the size in mm
6. Open up an explorer window and browse to your image. (the TIFF file you made earlier)
7. Drag this image onto the canvas of Smartprint
8. It should size your image how you had sized it in Photoshop
9. You may drag more images onto the canvas to maximise use of space. Although it will only let you drag one image at a time.
10. When you are happy, switch the printer on
11. Load the roll you wish to print on
12. Click the 'right' arrow to say you have loaded a roll
1. it will measure the width of the roll
13. Click the 'Remote' button when the printer is ready to print
14. On the computer go to: File > Print
15. Click OK for 1 copy
16. The Print Queue Manager will load up
1. Do not click on the Print Queue Manager as it will crash!
17. If the Print Queue Manager 'crashes' you will need to close it and open it again
1. Click on the SmartPrint software
2. In the file menu system go to: File > Close Queue Manager
3. In the file menu system go to: File > Open Queue Manager
4. In the Queue Manager go to: File > Start Print Queue

 Done

Mavericks "The software for the printer was installed incorrectly" error

After reimaging a computer suite with Mavericks and installing a networked printer via "Profile Manager" mobileconfig files, the printer had an exclamation mark next to it in the print dialogue box. When a print was sent to the queue, the print queue would load up and prompt the error:

"The software for the printer was installed incorrectly.
Would you like it to be repaired?"

After clicking "Repair" you are prompted with an Administrator Username and Password dialogue box.

I needed to find a way of "repairing" all these machines via ARD or Profile Manager. Looking in console, I found that the error was due to:
"/Library/Printers/hp/filter/hpPostProcessing.bundle/Contents/MacOS/hpPostProcessing" has insecure permissions (0100775/uid=0/gid=80)"

I found this forum which mentions the fix which is to change owner and permissions.

I ran a few commands to first change the owner, which needs to be Wheel, and the permissions with need to be 755. After doing so, I needed to reboot to see if it had fixed it, only to come up with more errors due to insecure permissions of the containing folders. After continuously doing this it finally fixed it.

I ended up running a command which changed the permissions for the whole /Library/Printers folder recursively:

chmod -R g-w /Library/Printers/
chown -R root:wheel /Library/Printers/

This needs to be run as root, which is an option in ARD, or you can put "sudo" before each line.

Installing Dell Color Laser 3110cn on Mac OS X 10.7 and later

We have a growing number of Apple Macs which are now on OS X 10.7 and up. Dell have only released PowerPC installer for their drivers which doesn't run on OS X 10.7 or later. Thankfully I found a nice forum where someone (Chezloi) has found the relavent files and put them in the new relavent folders.

1. unzip and put the Dell/ folder in 'Mac HD/Library/Printers/'
2. unzip and put DellJobAccount.plugin in 'Mac HD/Library/Printers/Dell/PDEs/'
3. unzip and put DellSecurePrint.plugin in 'Mac HD/Library/Printers/Dell/PDEs/'
4. unzip and put the en.lproj/ folder in 'Mac HD/Printers/PPDs/Contents/Resources/'

Hopefully this helps some more people. Think I'll write an installer for it.

HP Designjet 130 IP Address

One of the most annoying things I have to deal with is printers' IP addresses. This is especially difficult if the printer doesn't have a screen. Take the HP Designjet 130. It actually has a screen, but cannot represent digits. Not only this, but on top of this, it only has 3 buttons, none of which mention "setup". So, when the computer cannot send jobs to the printer how do you find out what is wrong? Well:

1. load up a browser window and browse to the last known IP address of the printer...
1. no response.
2. ping the IP address which you think it has......
1. no response.
3. hold in the power button (while it's switched on) and press the paper feed button 4 times!!!!!!!
1. it should print some (not sure how many) pages of information. 1st one has IP address.

I do remember wanting to write this down about 7 months ago but I can't find it anywhere. Anyway, here it is.

P.S. 

HP, could you please make the instruction number 3 in the list above more self-explanatory. i.e. have a button or just hold in the power button for setup printouts. 4 button presses is over the top.