EWS Labs, Printing and refund policies

Overview

This article provides information about EWS printing and refund policies, best practices for printing, and printing in Linux.

Paying for Printing

EWS printing uses Illini Cash, the campus-wide reloadable balance system that is attached to your I-Card. You may purchase Illini Cash from the PaperCut printing system at https://papercut.ics.illinois.edu. Illini Cash can be used within all computer labs across campus that participate in the Illini Cash system; for example, Engineering EWS labs and Housing/Technology Services ICS labs.

Best Practices for Printing

  • Many EWS printers are capable of double-sided printing. Double-sided print jobs will only be charged for the amount of physical pages printed, not per-side.
  • Check with an Engineering IT Help Desk for help if you have any confusion before you print, including information about which printers work better for certain types of jobs.
  • Preview your document in the program you are using to print, if possible.
  • Make sure you watch for and retrieve your print job promptly.
  • Follow this guide to send print jobs from your personal device: EWS Labs, Printing, Printing to an EWS printer with your own computer
  • One of the most common printing problems are errors when printing PDF documents. Always download the PDF and open it in Adobe Acrobat Reader, then select print within that application.  Printing PDFs from the built-in browser viewer or printing PDFs from the command line will often result in failed print jobs.

Printing Restrictions and Limitations

  • Use of EWS printers is restricted to those affiliated with Engineering, in accordance with our Account Policy. For more details, see EWS Labs, Account Policy
  • To prevent monopolization of printer use, print jobs exceeding a certain number of pages will automatically be denied.

Requesting a Refund

Engineering IT strives to provide reliable and error-free printing services. However, we realize that some printing problems are unavoidable.
Engineering IT will refund print jobs in cases where the job did not print correctly due to our error, e.g.:
  • streaks or failed jobs due to low toner
  • printers that are out of paper
Engineering IT will not refund print jobs due to user error, e.g.:
  • printing the wrong document
  • printing to the incorrect printer
  • printing to locations you do not have physical access to (make sure the lab is open!)
  • garbled output from printing a .pdf file in the browser (for PDFs, especially those with complex fonts, mathematical symbols, and graphics, try printing directly from Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Acrobat Reader)

To allow us to investigate and process refunds in a timely manner, all refunds must be requested within 48 hours of the failed print job. We cannot honor any refund requests submitted more than 48 hours after the initial print submission.

To request a refund, follow the steps below:

  1. Log into PaperCut at https://papercut.ics.illinois.edu.
  2. Select "Recent Print Jobs" from the left-hand menu.
  3. Locate the print job you would like to request a refund for, and click the "request refund" button under the "status" column.
  4. Leave a detailed description of your refund request in the "reason for request" box. Please be specific about the problem you encountered.
  5. Click "send." You will receive an e-mail when your refund request has been processed by Engineering IT, which may take up to 2 business days.

Print via command line on Linux

The lpr print command allows Linux users to send print jobs from the command line. For more information about lpr, run man lpr at the command line.  Print PDFs from within Adobe Acrobat Reader instead of the command line.
To send a text (.txt) or PostScript (.ps) file to a printer from a Linux workstation, enter the following command:
lpr -P printer_name file_name
To override the default double sided printing option:
lpr -o sides=one-sided file_name
For examples, see: Linux Command Quick Reference
Short URL for this page: https://go.illinois.edu/ews-printing