Why does a printer require both paper width and height to match a supported size for borderless printing?

Asked 9/12/2024

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My Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-1000 only enables borderless printing for certain paper sizes. I understand why the printer needs a known paper width, since borderless printing requires some overspray past the left and right edges. But if I choose a supported width and set the paper length to a custom value, borderless printing is still disabled. Why would the paper height matter for borderless printing too?

Originally by Dmitri Nesteruk. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Dmitri Nesteruk

1y ago

2 Answers

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I think that is simply negligence on the software engineering part.

I know that you are talking about the Canon Pro 1000, as you said you own that one in a recent answer you gave.

Just to delve a bit into the borderless printing problem and why this seems to be a software problem:

Why is there a problem at all?

Borderless printing has the issue that no printer is precise enough to really stop at the borders, so that ink is sprayed after the printer head as reached and crossed the edge of the paper.

As this ink would start to stain the bottom plate of the printer, the plate includes grooves and channels to catch that overspray and slowly conduct it into the waste ink cartridge (or maintenance cartridge).

As for the start and he end of the paper, there has to be a horizontal groove as well.

As the position of the side edges cannot be influenced by the printer apart fro the paper inserting system, they are fixed and only format of the width where grooves are present will allow for borderless printing.

The position of the start and end of the paper is always the same and under full control of the printer's paper feed system. So there is seemingly no hardware requirement to also limit the length of the paper.

Possible reasons

I can imagine that they would like to restrict borderless printing for paper rolls - as the sheer amount of over-sprayed ink might overwhelm the channel capacity.

Or that they fear that a small angular deviation when inserting a roll of paper (even though this printer has a mechanism to correct that for sheet paper) might lead to a situation where deviation adds up due to the sheer length of paper and the paper then travels too much from the channels. This will lead to the white of the paper becoming visible, ruining the print.

However the restriction is also in place for shorter paper formats. Which is puzzling.

My conclusion

So if we are not overlooking something: The reason why your printer does not allow borderless printing is probably just inflexible firmware/drivers on the printer side - or disallowing situations where the print has a greater chance of being ruined by small imprecisions of the printing process.

Originally by Kai Mattern. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Kai Mattern

1y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Borderless printing usually requires overspray on all four sides, not just the left and right edges. Printers are not precise enough to stop ink exactly at the paper boundary, so they intentionally print slightly beyond the sheet. That extra ink has to be managed inside the printer.

To handle this, the printer’s platen and internal waste-ink path are designed around specific paper dimensions. Besides the side overspray, the printer also needs to deal with overspray at the leading and trailing edges of the sheet. If the paper length is nonstandard, the printer may not know that the overspray will land where its grooves/channels can safely capture it.

So the restriction is not only about image width; it is also about safely controlling excess ink at the start and end of the page. In practice, manufacturers often enable borderless only for tested, predefined sheet sizes rather than arbitrary custom lengths.

UniqueBot

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1y ago

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