I was curious if anyone had run across this problem: Everything we print off of our DC7000AP is slightly smaller than what it's supposed to be. We have a DocuSP front end. Example: The business cards that we run are 3 1/2 in. X 2 in. A business card file with the correct size is sent to our DocuSP controller where we then take it and custom multiple-up it to give us 30-on a 12 X 18 sheet. But when I measure from the left side of the the left-most business card to the left side of the right-most business card, I find that I have lost 1/16 in. It doesn't seem like much, but as any knife operator will tell you, "Arrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhh!!!" It's really noticeable when you are trying to cut something out that has a border or type close to the edge of the card. Basically I just have to fudge it over and over again. I'm tired of fudging it.

I have checked and everything I can get to claims we're printing at 100%. I've had pre-press do the imposition for me and yet I still find that it is not printing to the right size. Xerox has been no help. Has anyone else run across this?

Most likely it is sheet shrinkage due to the heat from the fuser. Does it happen equally on different stocks? Try changing the grain direction of the stock and see if it is better or worse.

It does appear to be the paper shrinking. I ran Hammermill Color Copy and Finch Digital and they both have the same grain and both appear to shrink the same amount. And it does appear to be shrinking only in the 18 inch direction. It appears that the papers cannot be purchased with the grain running in the opposite direction. I guess I need to find more resilient paper.

Just for fun try running your imposition 24 up, or less, maybe the software is reducing to get 30 on the sheet??? The only way to get a digital cover with the grain long is to have it cut from a larger sheet, but then you need to be careful about keeping the cut accurate as well as trimming off what was on the bevel side of the knife, too much paper dust from that side.

We have to to be very careful about grain direction, especially if the piece gets folded. All of our stock is cut from parent sheets, sometimes we only get two out when we could get 4, but due to grain direction we have to cut it a particular way. You can always put the printed piece on the "paper stretcher," we keep ours by the "hole-unpuncher" and the "time machine."