Laser Printers and Decal Paper

[rosko_racer]

I have dealt with the ALPS Printer and an Inkjet printer to make my own decals with good success. I now have access to a Lexmark C532n Color Laser Printer and would like to know if this is a good printer for decals. I remember talking to Carl from Semroc during NARAM 50 on how he experimented with several brands of laser printers and how he found out that the "ink" from a few of them were not good for decals.

[rosko_racer]

OK, lets see if I can get this thread going...

I have decal paper for the ALPS. Can I use it on a Color Laser printer without damaging the printer or the paper?

[RangerStl]

Rosco;

Well, I really don't know. Not knowing exactly what decal paper you have I don't know whether it will stand up to the heat of the laser fuser. I know the old-school presentation transparencies were a problem. You had to make sure they weren't inkjet slides or they would melt all over the place and gum up the fuser.

www.decalpaper.com has paper for laser printers... Seems it would be cheaper to buy some new sheets that you know are good rather than take the chance of wrecking a printer over trying to save a $3 sheet of paper.

N

[billspad]

OK, lets see if I can get this thread going...

I have decal paper for the ALPS. Can I use it on a Color Laser printer without damaging the printer or the paper?

I can give you a definite maybe. I've used decal paper in my monochrome laser printer with no problems. A few years ago I took a piece to Kinko's and talked them into running it through one of their really expensive printers. It worked. I just got a new color laser printer but haven't tried to run decal paper through it yet. I saw this thread and was hoping you'd try yours first! Mine is a Brother and that's what my old monochrome printer was so I think it's got a good chance of working.

[FatBoy]

I use laser paper from decalpaper.com and have had both good and bad results all depending on the printer. The laser printers at FedEx/Kinkos run too hot and cause all manners of trouble, while a laser printer at my office works perfectly. It is kind of a hit and miss trial and error thing. If your laser printer (or software) has a setting for transparencies, I would try that.

[Pat_B]

Some of the larger color printers like Office Max use have an oil supply system. Those types of printers are somewhat unique in that respect and can sometimes cause problems. Most desktop units don't use an oil supply and typically give consistent results.

You'll just have to experiment. I was having really bad luck with two brands of decal paper in particular and finally determined that I needed to choose the 'transparency' setting in my printer driver and that resulted in it working perfectly.

Experiment with the paper type and weight settings and you can probably get most papers to work. My color laser printer also allows for a straight thru paper path by dropping down a door in the back. I found that eliminates any jams caused by the thicker paper not wanting to flex enough while going around the rollers in my printer.

[falingtrea]

One other thing to keep in mind is whether your color laser printer is a one pass or multi-pass unit. I think some color laser printers print each color on a seperate pass, so the paper has to be run past the fuser multiple times. Some high speed color laser printers have multiple color drums and a single fuser.

FYI that is why there are monochrome and color laser versions of transparencies. Monochrome printers only go through the fuser once so they can use paper that handles lower temps.