Xerox Phaser 7800 Professional Finisher Problems with Booklets

Hello all
I have just installed a Phaser 7800 with Professional Finisher, after reviewing the specifications, which indicated it would be ideal for our short-run short-page booklets (eg 100 x funeral booklets that are 2 x A4 pages, collated / folded / stapled.... easy!).
But I cannot figure out the Professional Finisher.... it just doesn't work? It folds/collates/staples but NEVER in the right order. It is downright useless. Eg. It will print/collate/ saddle stitch but the imposition is wrong, (completely wrong - page scaling, sizing, wrong sequence...) and there is no way to fix it. Using the Indesign "Print Booklet Feature" doesn't help as the Phaser will only do the collate/fold/staple if it does the imposition itself... so its a "double imposition" through software and creates the same useless booklet as the Phaser Print Driver does itself.
Yes, latest firmware and latest drivers are installed.
Does anyone have any solutions, workarounds or even know of any third-party software that overrides the Xerox print driver (eg, like Canon has for their large format printers).
We invested in the printer for a specific purpose that it was advertised for, but seems as though it's useless for that purpose.
I've been running digital printers since 1995 and learnt a lot of workarounds/techniques and solutions, but none of them will work with the Phaser 7800 Professional Finisher and print driver combo. Which is a shame. I can't find any Professional Finisher manual and only a few lines in the 7800 user manual, that don't help at all when the images are printing in mirror image and at half size.
Anyone else had simliar problems? Or a solution?
Thanks
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Just came across your post. Are you still having issues with the finisher as I just purchased the exact same set up and have found a solution.

 

Hi cb
Yes the problem still persists. We've been able to print very very simple A4 text booklets but there is no way to print correct size pages with bleed. If you have a solution I would love to know what it is! We are still outsourcing all the booklet work as this Xerox 7800 printer just isn't capable of producing what the marketing material claims.
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Ya it sounds like you may be running into the same issue that I had. I basically had to print hundreds of copies to get the right settings working. Please keep in mind that I still haven't been able to figure out how to do this through a PDF but if you have Adobe Indesign (it sounds like you do) then this should work.

1) In InDesign go to to File > Print booklet
2) Booklet type should be 2-up saddle stitch
3) Click 'Print Settings'
4) Click 'Setup'. Choose paper size and use 'Scale to Fit' (I think you can use constrain proportions as well but I keep it on Scale to Fit)
5) Go to 'Printer' settings
6) Click 'Scale to fit paper size' (again, I don't think this is necessary but I keep it on simply because of the print jobs I do)
7) Go to the Xerox Features page - These are the settings I use:
- Job type - Normal
- Paper - White, Automatically select
- 2-sided Printing: 2 sided printing flip on short edge
- Print quality: Enhanced
- Finishing: Go to Booklet Creation > Choose 'Booklet Fold and Staple' , Scale to new paper size: OFF, Booklet margins: none, gutter:0, creep: 0 > Click 'OK'
- Output destination: Booklet Maker

8) Go to the Paper/output drop down and click on 'Booklet Layout', click disabled.

Seems like a lot but I just saved all the settings as a print preset.

One other thing, I noticed the booklet maker won't fold and staple multi-page booklets unless the printer think you're printing 'Plain' paper.

That's it! Would love to know if that works for you!

 

Hi CB

Thanks for your reply. I have found that it works like that when printing from Indesign, but here's the things that still bother me:

1. If someone walks in with a multipage PDF then I don't want to have to lay that out in Indesign in order to print the booklet - you might need to spend 10 minutes to manually place the PDF when only 1 copy is needed.
2. Xerox have the "Booklet Creation Feature" so it should work, yet the operator has to turn it "OFF" and use Indesign to print the booklet
3. Xerox market it as being able to print booklets, yet you need to use someone else's software to make the thing actually work. Realistically you don't need the professional finisher attachment at all if you have your own finishing gear, as the software is supplied from the existing Indesign.
4. Indesign "can" be slow to print, but PDF's will print faster, so from a production viewpoint the faster option is better.

I have found that the Xerox "print booklet" feature will work with small jobs (eg I printed our accounts the other day in booklet feature for the accountant, but it's plain black text) but it can't handle anything with graphics without doing the "load into Indesign" workaround.

That said - when it does work through Indesign as you describe - it's quite thrilling!

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That a good point. I'm going to phone Xerox and see if they have an answer; I just received a PDF job and it's a pain in the butt to go through InDesign for a simple task like you mentioned. I'll let you know if I get any new information.