KIP 7170 printing issues

[Jeff Kogut]

We got a KIP 7170 about 6 weeks ago and have had constant issues trying to print a full set of drawings from a PDF. Has anyone else had issues with a similar KIP printer? As I understand they all use the 'System-K' software. We always make a PDF and then open the PDF to print from. We use Acrobat 9 Pro. Most PDFs for WD's are around 20-25mb and 20 pages, but we have issues sometimes even on single page smaller PDFs.

Previously we had a now 15 year old Gestetner (rebrand of a Ricoh) and it would print just about anything we threw at it over the years.

The tech from the printer dealer has been out about a dozen times and been on the phone with KIP programmers a few times. They've shared our PDFs with KIP and had similar issues. At one point they thought it was Acrobat 9 Pro because one PDF would print on a newer version and on the free Acrobat DC. But then we had another PDF that was the opposite.

We had some fill and line weight issues early on and I think those are more or less solved. The tech switched the KIP to stochastic and it seemed to be a good compromise for all pen weight issues.


Specifically the issues we still have are:

1. User sends a print, progress bars in Acrobat 9 Pro go as normal, KIP login pops up and enter job number, and then about 1/3 of the time there is no record or action on the KIP printer itself that a job was ever sent.

2. User sends a print and things go as normal but some pages drop. We had this yesterday with a 5 page PDF while the tech was here where only the first two sheets would print. This was from Acrobat 9 Pro, Acrobat DC, and through the System-K software itself logging in with a browser.


Anyone ever have similar issues with a KIP? Or have any ideas on the ArchiCAD end? The tech says they have other 7170's they've sold with no issues but that we are the only ArchiCAD office they have it running in.

[Anonymous]

Hi Jeff,
I have used KIP Printer for many years with Archicad

The first digital printer with kip was about 2004, with no problems

The last one i was using a KIP 3100 until 2 years ago (i purchased it new in 2011), i have moved on from that job now.

No big problems with Archicad. There was 1 file where we had problems where it wouldn't print(just the error report would come out), but with a split half search i found the problem and fixed it, something to do with an imported Autocad file from memory.

Our Workflow was...
We would publish from Archicad.
we would open the file in the free version of acrobat and print...

There were problems if the file had interesting fills in them, backgrounds pens of -1 print out as solid black from memory. We did come across some other quirky problems, but on balance it was a good cheap printer.

I don't know if this helps you, but i know that Archicad Published Pdfs and KIP's do play nice together most of the time.

Note... We would just print to it as a normal printer and it would work.

We could also go on to the printer and browse for a PDF on the network and it would print like that too.

[Jeff Kogut]

Thanks Allan, I did see your post a while back but have been holding off on an update. I think we have identified the problem and a workaround. The copier guy has been out every other day for 2 weeks and usually on the phone with KIP at some point. He rebuilt the software on the KIP along with files back and forth with KIP techs and new beta drivers back.

One issue was a buried setting in the tech's laptop that was causing an issue, don't ask me what it was. But it was causing random print failures, pages not to print, blank pages, and even corrupting files. It was a variable that was really hindering us from figuring out the issue on our end, see below.

We have some PDF's that we get back from building departments as approved sets. Some set compatibility to something like 'Acrobat 7.0 and higher'. Therein lies the issue with printing from Acrobat Pro 9, but DC was okay. We don't know the actual issue, but we've isolated it (knock on wood!). Our internal PDF's we make are now working okay on either Pro 9 or DC and use 'All supported versions' for compatibility.

But we're going to use Reader DC to print from since it somehow skirts around this issue once and for all. We'll use Pro 9 only to edit PDF's as required.

[Anonymous]

Jeff or others,
See your post from a year ago.
We use the same KIP model. Our workflows include both printing published PDF files and plotting directly out of ArchiCad (which I like to do for check prints). When we purchased the kip several years ago, we were in AC17. Just recently, when using AC21, we noticed problems with the -1 background fills that you kind of mentioned when plotting. Printing PDF files work fine, just not plotting. I tried several different drivers including the generic, HP755CM and couple others but no change. Any options from anybody is appreciated.

jim walls