Unattended printing: the failures that matter

Unattended does not mean unmaintained. It means the customer is not the operator, so the operator has to hear about problems another way.

Empty paper is the boring failure and the most common. If the printer cannot say the tray is empty, a human still has to look. Design the cabinet so looking is fast.

A busy printer should queue, not take money and stall. A paid job with nowhere to go is a trust event. The product should show the job as held, not complete.

Restarts happen. Power flaps. The controller should come back and still know which jobs were paid. That is less glamorous than a 3D render and more important.