How can I adjust double sided printing on my Inkjet?

October 9, 2007 11:55 AM

I'm thinking of making a small mockup booklet on my desktop printer, an Epson 1290. The pages need to be double sided, but when I flip the paper over in the printer and print the other side, the prints on each side don't line up correctly, normally being about 5mm out. I'm using Mac OS X and I can print in almost any format but will most likely be using Adobe PDF, Adobe Illustrator or Adobe InDesign. Are there any clever tricks to remedy this?
posted by stackhaus23 to Media & Arts (9 answers total)

Check one more time that you have the paper size, page margins and so on set up correctly. Then measure the paper and check again if there's anything slightly off what it should be. My printer doesn't seem to like printing too close to whatever it thinks is the bottom edge of the page, and sometimes this can cause problems when I'm trying to print things other than plain A4 pages; fixing it to look nice with double-sided stuff generally involves fiddling with document margins and swearing at the printer. I'm fairly sure there should be a simpler method out there that I haven't found yet.

Might it be something that would be made easier with CocoaBooklet, if you don't have it yet? I haven't had occasion to use it yet myself, but have heard good things about it.
posted by Lebannen at 12:27 PM on October 9, 2007

If the error is constant, can't you just adjust the layout accordingly? In this case, 2.5mm on each side?
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:30 PM on October 9, 2007

I would suggest wider margins around the text so that you can afford a few millimeters offset. Maybe get thicker paper that's more opaque so the difference is not as noticeable from one page to the next.
posted by mattbucher at 12:39 PM on October 9, 2007

I'm often called upon to make mock-ups of publications at work. Though we have a top-of-the-line Minolta laser printer, things still get printed just off enough to ruin an otherwise perfectly good double-sided comp. My solution? Spray adhesive, single-sided prints, an exacto knife, a lightbox and a good twenty minutes of mumbled expletives per page. YMMV.
posted by Pecinpah at 12:45 PM on October 9, 2007

Single-sided printout, with crop marks. Xerox, chop, fold, bind.
posted by rhizome at 1:45 PM on October 9, 2007

I've never seen any printer duplex with much accuracy. Even the ones with built-in duplexers. Give yourself a bigger bleed.
posted by Plug Dub In at 1:58 PM on October 9, 2007

Seconding (thirding) the above: print one-sided and spray glue them together back to back. That's a better way to do mockups anyway. Much less work.
posted by rokusan at 2:23 PM on October 9, 2007

If the offset is inconsistent, you can't do very much with the printer or the software - you can only experiment with paper - perhaps thicker paper, or paper that is "grain long" (or "grain short") will have less slop. Cleaning any of the rollers that move the paper through your printer might alleviate some of the slop.

If the offset is consistent (every "back" is 5 mm lower that its corresponding "front") you could try creating two documents, with one containing all the "fronts" with a top margin 2.5 mm wider and the other file containing all the "backs" with the top margin 2.5mm narrower.
posted by Crosius at 3:17 PM on October 9, 2007

Yep. Spray glue. Specifically 3M Photomount. I've used this technique for everything from business cards to brochures, refining the technique over the past 10 years.

Print the two sides on separate sheets with crop marks. Your paper needs to be larger than the design you're working with to allow for the crop marks and bleeds. This means that 8.5x11 pages need to be printed on 11x17 paper. Tape one side face down on a lightboard (or a window) so it doesn't shift and you can see the crop marks through the paper. Then spray the back of the other page with a few light dustings of glue, not a heavy coat.

Carefully align it with the crop marks on the taped down sheet, starting with a corner (so you don't prematurely stick the entire sheet) and then burnish the entire sheet (using a blank sheet of paper to protect the finish). Then trim the entire thing out of the duplex you've just created using the crop marks on one side.

This is by no means a way to mass produce anything, but it works for small projects and gives excellent results.
posted by Jeff Howard at 3:28 PM on October 9, 2007