Multiple up Business cards

[alig31]

Hi,

I am trying to multi up business cards on to a sheet of SRA3. The file multiples up ok but it seems to alter the actual printed size of the file. I want to print the attached file keeping the 'art area' is 85 x 55mm (along the crop marks). I am happy to take out the crop marks if it is easier.

When I print 21 of them on a sheet (3 x 7), without cropping anything, the actual print size was approx 80mm x 50mm. When I cropped it to the borders of the full bleed (page 4 of the pdf) it came out as 98mm x 64mm approx.

I have tried setting the page size to 91 x 61mm (so 3mm either side of the actual area required which to it to the edge of the full bleed and included the edge of the crop marks) and also to 85 x 55, but the printed image is then greater than the 85 x 55mm.

Is their a way to print so that the art area remains fixed at 85 x 55mm.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi alig31

I tried printing your PDF directly from the Viewer without any page scaling and the printed result was the dimensions that the document indicates. Actually your PDF is 88mm ax 55mm not 85mm x 55mm but I don't think that is your question.

Can you confirm that you have no page scaling set in the PDF-XChange Viewer Print Dialogue? Ideally a screen shot of that dialogue when it prints to the wrong size should help us identify if there is scaling set that should not be.

hth

[Stefan - PDF-XChange]

Hello alig31,

Do you want to achieve a result as in the attached PDF file?
If yes - then let me tell you what steps I did to achieve this.

1) I created a custom paper size for our printing driver - and saved that under the name SRA3. I hope I got te correct dimensions of 450 x 320 mm.
2) I cropped your pages to 64.2 mm on the vertical (I think it was 2.8mm crop on all four sides of your original document) - this allows 7 cards to fit one under the other on a 450mm paper - 7 x 64.2 = 449.4 mm
3) Selected to print multiple pages per sheet, and selected to print some of the "pages" of your document more than once in order to fill the SRA3 sheet (check the attached printing_options.zip file).
4) then clicking print produced the attached document.

There appears to still be some scaling - as the dimensions of the trim area are about 87.7 x 54.8 mm compared to the original 88 x 55 - but that's a 0.3% error which I hope is acceptable.

If printing directly to a hardware printer you might need to consider it's physical margins where it can not print - and crop further or reduce the number of rows of cards accordingly.

Best,
Stefan

[WilliamJohn11]

Make sure scaling is set to 100% or “Actual Size” in your print settings. Some imposition software auto-scales artwork to fit the layout, which affects final size. For accurate results, manually place 85 x 55mm cards without scaling. We've seen similar issues in letterhead printing services where size precision matters.