Need 3X5 cards printed.

June 8, 2009 9:53 AM

Need help printing 3X5 cards on a laser printer.

Hoping a fellow Mefite can help me out. I need roughly 600 3 X 5 cards printed on a laser printer (double sided). Staples and Kinkos won't do it for me, and I don't have access to a laser printer that will do it. The text should be the same direction on both sides, meaning the cards are intended to be flipped horizontally, if that makes sense.

I will ship you the 600 blank cards so you won't have to purchase them.

E-mail me at johndoemefi [at] gmail [dot] com with your address and a quote if you are interested.

Or alternatively, if you know any commercial places that will do printing of this sort, please let me know. Most places I called said that 3X5 was just too small.

posted by banished to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Most places I called said that 3X5 was just too small.

Have you tried printing two cards on 6x10, or some multiple of 3x5 using n-up printing? Or even standard 8.5 x 11 card stock? And then have the printing place cut them to size.
posted by meowzilla at 10:02 AM on June 8

I think in general you're going to find 3x5 is just too small. If you do find a taker, ship about 50 extra cards, because there are going to be a lot of failures.

A better approach would be to layout the 3x5 cards on 8.5x11 cardstock and pay to have the cuts made. I know Kinko's can do double sided cardstock and they will do the cuts if you include the proper marks to show where to cut.
posted by jeffamaphone at 10:03 AM on June 8

Meowzilla has it. Generally things that small are not printed upon: they're printed many-up on larger paper and then cut. Every printing place knows this and I am surprised they didn't tell you so. They even have the lovely straight power cutters to make it all perfect.

(For example, 6x10, which they probably can print, is four cards, minus a millimeter of trim.)
posted by rokusan at 10:05 AM on June 8

You can generally buy 3x5 cards on an n-up, perforated letter stock. Then all you'd have to do is separate the cards and any standard printer or print shop should be able to handle it.
posted by webhund at 11:09 AM on June 8

A couple ofyears ago I was looking into running perforated 8.5"x11" cardstock through pretty beefy HP laser printers. There were a lot of jams when trying to use the tray or duplexer -- manual feed was the only way. Plus the stuff was crazy-expensive.

So I would also call Kinko's/Staples/whoever and just pay for it. (Consider getting extras made in case there's a setup fee or overhead cost or something.)
posted by wenestvedt at 11:18 AM on June 8

Laser printers just won't do this--a couple years back I searched high and low for a laser printer that would do exactly that, and the closest I could find was a couple of models that could handle 4x6 cards.

Most modern inkjet printers do a good job with edge-to-edge printing on small paper, especially the ones marketed to photographers and graphic designers. You may be better off picking up a decent inkjet and doing the printing yourself.

Or, if you could go up to 4x6 instead of 3x5, there are plenty of places that'll do that online for a good price (much better than Kinko's). PsPrint springs to mind, but Google "postcard printing" if you want to price shop.
posted by tomatofruit at 12:11 PM on June 8

I ended up doing it myself with a Samsung ML-2010 Laser printer. Each card had to be fed individually. It did take a while and the feed mechanism didn't always take. But it was doable, and definitely worth the extra trouble, for me anyway.
posted by banished at 4:52 AM on June 12