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Laser Printing Tips For Polyester Materials And Glossy Materials

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Laser printers use powdered toner rather than liquid ink. This toner is actually powdered plastic, and during the printing process the toner is “fused” (melted) onto the surface of the label sheet. Unlike paper labels that have lots of pores and paper fibers for toner to grip onto, polyester and other synthetic label materials have very smooth surfaces that are more difficult for the toner to anchor onto. If the toner isn’t fused completely then the image can be scratched off the sheet fairly easily.You’ll need to do three things to fuse the toner completely on the surface of these glossy sheets (in other words; to make this material scratch-proof.)

  • Print on a Label setting: Go to File>Print>Preferences> then look for a Paper Type or Media Type or some drop-down menu that allows you to select a Label setting.
  • Manually feed the sheets through the bypass tray. Do not put these in the letter tray.
  • Open the output door at the back of the printer so the sheets come straight out.

These three steps signal the printer mechanism to slow down — which gives the toner longer to fuse onto the surface of the sheet.

If these steps fail to make the toner scratchproof then check to see what the printer’s dots-per-inch (dpi) setting is. Most printers have a default setting of 600X600 dpi. If the toner scratches off at that setting then lower the dpi to 300X300. This puts less toner on the sheet so the printer has a better chance of fusing all the toner. Note: In most cases using 1200″ × 1200 dpi puts far more toner on the surface of the sheet than can be fused completely.

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