I need to print invitations for my box social - halp!

May 15, 2007 3:07 PM

a "straight-through" laser printer - does one exist?

Word to your moms, metafilter! This is another one of those google-proof questions, so I assume:

I am stupid
I am not aware of the correct term for searching
or
Someone's hiding it from me.

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I need to personalise large amounts of heavy card (250-400gsm), and if I stick it through a standard HP laser, it comes out curled up from the heat and having gone around the drum. This is annoying.

Is there such a printer (can be inkjet, laser or colour laser), that does not work on the drum principle, or does not curve the paper/card being printed as much? I don't mind if it has to be a commercial colour laser printer.

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Thank you kindly to all who answer, you are magenta pixels in a sea of green.

posted by snailer to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

At least on my HP Laserjet printer, there is a door on the front of the printer that can be opened. When opened, printed pages do not curl up to the output tray but instead shoot straight out onto the floor. This is to solve exactly your problem.

Suggest you look for a door.
posted by jellicle at 3:19 PM on May 15, 2007

The search terms you're looking for are "straight paper path color printer"
posted by pmbuko at 3:22 PM on May 15, 2007

Most laser printers have such an option.
Suggest reading your manual.

I think most HP Inkjet printers do curl around, so that might not work.

What kind you got?
posted by MtDewd at 3:48 PM on May 15, 2007

Lots of workgroup class HP LaserJets (III, 4/4Si, 2100, 4300 series etc.) have this feature. Sometimes you need to open a door on the front for manual feeding and a door on the back to let the paper out.
posted by Mitheral at 3:51 PM on May 15, 2007

My HP 1100 has an essentially straight feed, but they are notorious for feed issues, mainly feeding too many sheets at once.
posted by caddis at 4:24 PM on May 15, 2007

The Lasjet III has a pretty good straight through of you use the face-up output tray, as others have noted. It's based on the Canon SX engine, which can be found in several other printers. IIRC, the DECLaser 2150 and 2250 use this engine, and one of the LaserWriter II models. These are very old printers and if you can find them, they'll probably need a fairly thorough cleaning to get acceptable output. The Canon engines of this era very pretty fabulous in terms of their durability, but the controllers are dog slow and the resolution usually topped out at 300 dpi.

I've fed card stock through each of these printers and they do leave a little curl.
posted by plinth at 5:18 PM on May 15, 2007

I've got a bunch of old HP Laserjets that can do straight through printing, either by opening a door on the back or just flipping a little lever. The downside being that they're all single-sheet at a time when you want the straight path.

Iirc, the Brother laser I set up for a client can do straight prints from the secondary paper tray that folds down in the front.
posted by jjb at 5:20 PM on May 15, 2007

I have a mid-1990s HP Laserjet 4+ and it does not do straight through printing. Opening the door on the back causes an error message to pop up on the printer and suspends operation. Been there, done that. Really dumb design because it would probably work otherwise.
posted by rolypolyman at 5:41 PM on May 15, 2007

I suspect you're barking up the wrong tree here. My experience with any kind of heavier stock is that generally the fuser can't fuse the toner onto heavier papers. Sometimes this has been due to the paper being more textured, but I've even had the problem with smooth card stock.

The result is much of the text flakes off and the end result looks shitty. For all their low-end glory, perhaps an inkjet might be better. Or, you could go the opposite route and go for something like a solid ink printer.
posted by mjbraun at 6:59 PM on May 15, 2007

Most laser printers have a door on the back that opens up for this very purpose. (Well, okay, it's really for fixing paper jams, but if you trick the sensor, it'll think the door is closed and let you print straight through.)

Also, if you print on both sides of the paper, the curling gets cancelled out.
posted by fvox13 at 8:10 PM on May 15, 2007

My Samsung has this feature. I use it for printing envelopes and sheet labels all the time. It would probably work well for cardstock.

Just as a general recommendation, when looking for this feature, you might Google/look-for "envelope printing" or "label printing" since that's a major use of the straight-through paper path. (If you run Avery labels through a curl-around path they tend to start to unpeel themselves. Badness.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 8:28 PM on May 15, 2007

The Laserjet 5L/6L printers could do this and were pretty inexpensive, but they weren't that well designed IMHO and older units typically had paper feed/roller issues.
posted by reptile at 10:26 AM on May 16, 2007