I attempted to print some stuff out on heavy weight paper 216 g/m^2 using the color laser printer that Scottland won last year. It didn't go so well. For some reason, the toner wasn't melting to the paper like it should. Instead, it was falling off and smearing all over the paper. I took a look at the Owners Manual and saw that it contained hardly any useful information. Basically, it told me how to set the printer up and install new paper and toner.
I talked to Rob (Amy's boyfriend) and he suggested that I try using a more glossy type of paper. He also suggested that I go to Paperzone, which is located in SODO, right across the street from the really fancy two level Krispy Kreme. At Paperzone, I had a frustrating conversation with one of their employees. Basically, she told me that guessing the type of paper that would work in a laser printer was a roll of dice. She helpfully pointed out the free samples of paper that you could take to test your printer on. I grabbed a few of those and went home.
My hunch all along had been that I simply didn't have the printer set-up correctly to handle heavy paper like this. After I got home, I ran the samples of paper and had the same problem, though I noticed that the lightest weight paper I grabbed had the least problems. I went through the Owner's Manual more carefully and noticed some references to a "User's Guide." I went through the pile of stuff that came with the printer and found no User's Guide. Then I went to the Dell website and searched through the online technical documentation. After a while, I found the Users guide. It pretty clearly wasn't something that would have been packaged with the printer, as it was more like an interactive help file for your computer than a publishable document.
So, I downloaded the User's Guide and went through. I quickly figured out how to change the weight of paper the printer was expecting to encounter and ran through a couple of print jobs to see if the changes to the printer settings had any effect. Everything printed just fine. And now, I can print onto card stock.
Exciting, no?
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1 comment:
Sounds like my typical day. Ahhh, the joys of working at a copy center. BTW, whether you pick a PS or PCL driver can also make a different. I'd recommend the PS driver with cardstock. Also, inks don't adhere so well with certain papers, such as "parchement" paper. And don't ever try running "linen" paper through, because that could just get messy!
~ Charles
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