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January 2006 - Pull into a gasoline station and you have to make a decision.
Do you fill your vehicle with regular gasoline that has an octane rating of 87 or less?
A mid-range gasoline with an octane rated 88-91?
Or a 92 octane-or-higher premium grade?
It all depends on the engine that powers your car. It will run regardless of the grade you choose…but will perform optimally if you choose the grade blended to interact with specific characteristics of your car’s engine.
The same principle applies to office paper which, like gasoline, comes in various grades.
Which paper is right for you? It all depends on the engine – in this case, the type of printing device – you intend to put it in.
Think of a laser printer or laser copier as a lightening-fast, precisely-calibrated high performance sports car. It runs best on laser paper.
Think of an inkjet printer as a luxury sedan. It’s not as fast as the sports car, but the colors it produces are more luxuriously lavish than the colors from a laser printer. Guess what? An inkjet printer performs best when filled with inkjet paper. (Are you starting to detect a pattern here?)
Think of a copier as a taxicab – a basic but essential form of conveying images. It can’t produce images as finely detailed as a laser or inkjet printer, so the paper it uses need not be engineered as precisely. Plain copy paper works just fine.
So what are the fundamental differences between paper types? Here goes. |
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A laser printer uses ink powders, known as toners, to form images on paper. During the printing process, toner particles are applied to the paper … heated to their melting point … then solidify again as they cool, literally fusing to the paper. Permanent fusion of the toner and paper is vital for quality and image durability.
Fusion, to a great extent, depends on electrical properties, so the electrical properties of laser paper must be carefully balanced. Laser paper must also be as smooth as possible. The smoother the sheet, the more evenly the toner particles will lay down on it, yielding sharper, smoother images. Laser papers are generally somewhat stiff to the touch and heavy weight – 24 lbs. or more.
Preparing a “make-or-break” presentation or proposal? Consider using a laser paper with a glossy finish that makes colors really stand out. |
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Inkjet printing uses an altogether different process. Moisture is applied to the paper in the form of millions of microscopic water-based ink dots that are sprayed onto the surface to create text, lines and solid areas. The more dots per square inch, the sharper the document will be.
To assure that dots maintain their circularity, inkjet paper is specially treated to prevent the dots from “wicking” (spreading) from side to side, or from bleeding through the sheet. Chemicals are applied both to the surface and into the core layer of a sheet of inkjet paper. The chemicals on the surface keep the dots from spreading; the core layer chemicals prevent them from bleeding through to the other side of the sheet.
Unlike laser toner, which melts then solidifies almost immediately, inkjet droplets take a long time to dry. If you print a document on inkjet paper, and touch the image before the ink has had time to dry, the image may smear. To avoid smearing, many businesses have traditionally used laser printers.
That may soon be changing. HP has recently introduced a proprietary new technology, ColorLok™, that has been incorporated into most of its inkjet office papers and all of its multi-use and copier papers. HP Papers with ColorLok are engineered to dry up to three times faster than ordinary papers, so printed images can be handled sooner, thus reducing the risk of smearing. ColorLok technology also produces blacks that are up to 40 percent bolder and colors are up to 10 percent more vivid than ordinary paper.
Like their laser counterparts, higher-end inkjet papers generally start at 24 lb.weight and go up from there. Some inkjet papers – photo papers in particular – come with glossy surfaces. Coated papers cost more but are well worth the cost for certain types of projects.
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Laser printing prints original images from a computerized file. A copier makes a –duh—copy, a duplication of an image which isn’t as sharp or as detailed as the original.
While the electrical properties of copy paper have to be carefully balanced for toner fusion and to prevent sheets from sticking together and jamming, copy paper tends to be rougher to the touch than higher-end papers. It’s lighter too – generally 20 lbs. Not surprisingly, since it’s consumed in vast quantities, it’s the least expensive type of office paper. |
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Just when you thought you had it straight, some papers are made to be used in any type of printing device. They’re smoother than ordinary copy papers, have surface characteristics like inkjet papers and are lightweight like copy paper. HP Multipurpose Paper (which now includes ColorLok technology) is, far and away, America’s best-selling MP paper. |
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So what type of paper should you use?
It depends on the equipment you plan to use it in, and the type of documents you’re producing.
If you’re using your color laser or inkjet printer to produce important documents like presentations or reports, use a laser or inkjet paper. If you’re using it to produce a memo, you might as well use a multipurpose paper, which costs less.
And what about whiteness, brightness and weight? Generally, the heavier, thicker, brighter and whiter a sheet, the higher its quality and the more you’ll pay. (Remember: You get what you pay for.)
The easy way to keep all this straight is to think of your printing device as a car.
If you’re driving a sports car or luxury car (laser or inkjet printer) you can fill it with regular (copy paper) but you won’t get the performance it’s capable of delivering. Fill it up with laser or inkjet paper engineered to help it perform to its full potential, and you’ll arrive in style every time. |
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