I give up! Can I send someone the ID CS3 file and print file for Help

Question

I have done everything I possibly can (given I am no where near expert), and can not figure this printing out.
I have a food menu that is on 11 x 17 (will be tri fold) ID file with a border. The border is a "Placed" PSD file into a separate ID layer.
Even though it looks perfect on the screen, I can not get it to print properly using an Epson Stylus 1400 series printer (wide body).
The border does not print correctly.
I can (and will if you want), print the menu to a file and send it to someone (along with the ID CS3 file and PSD file) to see if someone can tell me what stupid things I am doing.
I also believe I can print to a file, then bring the printed file up on the screen and do a Snagit Screen Grab to upload to pixentral.com If this is possible, you will see how the border did not print correctly. I would also take a screen grab of the ID CS3 menu file so you can see how the border is perfect.
I am hoping someone with a wide body printer can load 11 x 17 paper and try to see what I am doing wrong. I am printing it on 11 x 17, landscape, centered borderless stock and it looks good in preview mode.
Any and all help would be appreciated. At least I don't have those OOLLM phantom lines like I did on my last plea for help.
Bob

Answer 1

Hmmm.
Looking at the last picture, I see what is going to be a bit of a problem for you, I think. Do you really have a thin red line around the outside of the yellow border?
Here's how bleeds work, and why they are set up the way they are. Printing, and more importantly, trimming, is done on mechanical equipment. Paper sizes may or may not be entirely uniform in a stack, or there may be minor alignment issues when jogging the stack, or there may be dust build-up, or any number of other little things that conspire to keep a stack of prints from being 100% perfectly aligned with each other, or a cutter setting may be off by a few thousandths of an inch making the trim larger than intended. In such cases there is a possibility that color intended to run all the way to the edge of the page may in fact stop short of the trimmed edge, leaving the paper showing.
To hide this, and that's all you are doing, hiding misalignments, areas of color at the edge of the page are extended beyond the page boundary, typically 1/8" in the US, so that the excess color will fill what would otherwise be a blank area after trimming. InDesign Allows you to set up a "Bleed Area" in the document setup, which adds a colored guide around the page for easy reference, and also allows you to check the "use Bleed Area" checkbox in the print dialog so you don't need to specify it manually.
Now for why that narrow red line is a problem, if it is really there. Printing presses typically can maintain sheet to sheet registration that is very accurate, but desktop printers are often off by as much as 1/16" in either direction from sheet to sheet. Further, there can be some paper stretching during the printing process, and the aforementioned dust build-up or slight errors in cutter setup, which can cause the paper to be trimmed slightly inside the intended mark. Also consider that if the paper is cut outside the mark on one edge, it will be cut the same distance inside on the opposite side.
So, if you have a thin line on the edge of the page, you need to be very accurate in both sheet-to-sheet registration AND in cutter setup or you risk cutting off the line on one or two edges completely, and leaving more than you planned on the opposite edges. The thinner the border is, the greater the risk of cutting it off, and the more small differences in position will show. (The difference between 1/16 and 1/8 is much more obvious than the difference between 1/16 and 3/8 )
As a corollary, jobs that bleed need to have a safe zone, or "live area" that is smaller than the page dimension by at least the amount of the bleed allowance all around so that trimming at the outside of the bleed on one edge doesn't end up cutting off something important on the opposite edge. The easiest way I can think of to visualize this is to think of trimming as if you were putting an open frame the finished size on top of the print, and you move it around so that the hole exposes more on one edge while hiding the opposite edge the same amount.
Peter