Why are the margins of the same document so different with different printers?

When trying to print a page written in LibreOffice to an Epson WF-3520 printer, a top margin and left and right margins are added cutting off print. The same doc prints fine on a HP a909A printer. Can anyone help, Epson says it is an application problem?

Did you print using the same settings? Could you list the settings here? How large are the margins in the document? How large are the differences? What are the default margins of both printers?

Each printer has its characteristics, like the paper dimensions it can handle, the minimal margin and the error margin (how far it can be off). This is one of the reasons that text documents have a relatively large margin: it should be large enough for all printers to support it and if the document content is a few millimeters off, it is not really noticeable.

But then the printer software (the drivers) and how you print also come into play. The printer drivers, especially from different manufacturers, may interpret your print job configuration differently. If you want to stretch the content to fill the whole page, the size of the content on the page will probably be different when printed using different printers.

You could try to:

  • make the default margins of the Epson printer smaller in the printer (driver) configuration
  • make the margins of your document large enough that both printers’ own margins fall within the document’s margins
  • print using the exact same settings, using absolute dimensions and scaling (100%)