Print Quality affected by wireless?

[stayathomedad]

This really isn't a VW question. It's more of a question about printing high quality prints that Vectorowrks has shown me.

 

For years we have generated sheet layers and did most of our final prints by using the Publish command, creating pdfs and then printing at a professional print store (Fedex Office or something similar). But this year we brought our own high quality printer into the office. It's a Canon ImageRunner similar to a lot of the machines used in Fedex Office locations.

 

I now see a lot of differences in the print quality simply based on how I send the file to the printer. I have the same settings whether I publish the sheet layer as a pdf or if I publish directly to the printer.

 

The lowest quality print is if I access the pdf I create through the Publish command and then print through my operating system. I am on a Mac, so I am using the Preview app. I am connecting to the printer wirelessly through its internal wireless capabilities. The quality improves slightly if I use Adobe Reader to print to the printer through the wireless connection. Both of these prints have greyed lines that aren't completely printing to the point I can hardly see them and are very sub-par.

 

The quality improves substantially when I print directly from the Publish command (Still wirelessly). I can clearly see all of the greyed lines as I expect. Some of the edge borders however do not get printed.

 

But I can take the pdf file, the exact same file that I opened with Preview and Reader, and put it on a thumb drive. Walk over to the printer and insert it into the USB port on the printer and then use the printers interface to access and print the files. If I do this I get my full drawing printed as I expected. It is even better quality than when I skipped creating the pdf and printed directly from the Publish command.

 

What is driving the low quality prits? Is it the wireless connection? The pdf creation?

Can I get high quality and wireless?

 

Maybe these are better questions for a Canon ImageRunner Knowledgebase, but I thought that maybe someone here might have worked through this also.

[Benson Shaw]

Whoa.  Never heard this one before. Here is another variable to consider:

 

Do the IEEE WiFi standards match in router and copier?  According to professor internet, 802.1ax is most recent. But many devices with previous versions eg .802.1ac, 802.b/g/n and others are still in service. 

Just a thought. I have no tech skills or knowledge in this. The newer ones are mostly interoperable with the older ones, but there must be some quality improvements in the newer versions - speed? Data continuity?

 

-B

[Pat Stanford]

You will certainly get different results using the OS print option versus the Publish to PDF. But I would expect to get the same results between Publish to PDF and Publish to Print.

 

It is unlikely that there is a difference between sending a PDF over the network would be processed differently than one moved via a USB drive. The networks and the USB should just move the same bits in different ways. But anything is possible.