I'm rather new to setting up Zebra printers for label printing and I'm running into an issue with what I believe is the darkness and speed settings. What happens is that whenever there is a solid black rectangle (most notable on bigger blocks rather than lines) the printer makes a loud noise and slows down tremendously while printing those sections. I've tried decreasing the darkness but the lowest I can go is 13 and still have everything print in an acceptable manner. Using this darkness, I've tried adjusting the speed to all available settings, but to no avail.
The printer is a Zebra QLn420 wireless printer, and I'm using the Zebra Setup Utility to adjust the settings. The ZPL II labels do have commands to override these, but while testing I have removed these commands so that it will only use the printer settings.
Has anyone encountered a similar issue or know what could be a possible resolution?
Link to the support page for this product on Zebra's site: https://www.zebra.com/us/en/support-downloads/mobile/qln420.html#mainpartabscontainer_8f95=manuals
I've tried researching by searching on Google and going over the documentation, but nothing helpful that I could find. We had these exact models before for testing before purchasing, and had them set up so that the print quality was great but the noise was not made, so I know it's possible, but we do not have the settings that were used on the printer from that testing run. Thank you in advance for any advice!