Paper Saving Trick

I can't take credit for this. I stumbled across it in a posting on Luminous-Landscape's Printers, Papers, and Inks forum. Thanks to someone who goes by "darlingm" for the hint. I did a little testing, cleaned-up his (or her) instructions, and posted them here.

When I print nozzle checks, I do so on plain bond paper-cheap stuff, fairly thin. I feed the page, print the nozzle check, make a couple of notes (date, and the room's temperature and relative humidity, and mark any missing nozzles). I then file the sheet for use a second time. When that time comes I turn the sheet 180° so the previously-printed pattern and notes are at the top, with the clean end of the sheet feeding into the printer. This scheme allows two nozzle checks per sheet. If I used a heavier paper I could print two more on the reverse side. However, with thin paper, inspecting the patterns as I do with an 8X loupe under strong light, anything printed on the opposite side of the sheet is quite visible and distracting.

darlingm's method allows printing multiple, up to five, nozzle check patterns on one side of a sheet, as follows:

Print the first nozzle check as usual. No "trick" involved. This puts the pattern at one end of the sheet, as usual. The next time a nozzle check print is needed, insert the sheet just as before, that is, with the previously-printed pattern going into the printer first. Feed the sheet as usual. When the 7900 is done setting it up, change the feed to roll paper, and then press the down-arrow several times, enough so the old pattern clears the printhead, putting clean paper in the head's path. Finally, switch the feed back to sheet, and then print the nozzle check as usual. Using this method it's very easy to print two more patterns on the sheet, and then feed the sheet with the remaining clean end first, to print a fourth pattern. One can squeeze in five with a little practice. That's great, but I'm a little lazy, and I find four per sheet to be plenty.

Above is a very poor photo of one of my resulting sheets. I'm an obsessive note-taker (more than a little nuts, surely); I like some extra space on the sheet for my scribbles. The top three nozzle checks were printed as described. The one at the bottom of the sheet was printed last, feeding the sheet normally.

A little excessive? More trouble than it's worth? Probably, and maybe. Still, a clever idea, I think.

  --Jay