I have a question regarding printers... What kind of printer should I have when printing an image onto transparency film (for screen burning)? According to screen printing videos, laser printers work best. I already have an ink-jet, and just need to get the transparency film to get things going... The film seems very expensive, so before buying it, I am considering exchanging my printer for a laser version. Please share your expert advise, thank you in advance! Appreciate it...
How are you? Thank you so much for your advise... Sounds like the laser is a better choice. I have an ink-jet, but worry that it will not print black enough on transparency film. It looks a little gray when I hold it up (on plain paper). Hate to buy a whole box just to try one sample... I am considering getting a used laser printer, does that sound like a better solution? Thanks again!!! Have a great day.
Hello,
Sounds like the laser is a better choice. I have an ink-jet, but worry that it will not print black enough on transparency film. It looks a little gray when I hold it up (on plain paper). Hate to buy a whole box just to try one sample... I am considering getting a used laser printer, does that sound like a better solution? Thanks again!!! Have a great day.
I wouldn't go out and buy a laser simply for printing transparencies. I use a standard HP inkjet for my transparencies and it works fine. I change the quality setting on it to Best and print. Worse case is putting the transparency through twice for a double coat on ink.
There are also some sprays on the market that will darken the ink. Can of that is cheaper than buying a new laser.
You can print halftones on an inkjet. It's not nearly as big a deal as software marketers would have you believe.
Laser printers were the standard for years, because they print halftones and they print dark.
However, the film shrinks the slightest bit from the heat of the printer, which isn't a big deal, unless you need perfect registration, then it can be troublesome. You can pre-shrink the films though, so it's no an issue.
Both have their ups and downs, neither are perfect, but really, there's no real advantage or disadvantage to either. Use what you got, I'd say.
You actually have to be careful when buying laser jet printers too, epsecially for fine detail and halftone. Laser printers have to heat the paper to fuse the ink to it, an inkjet just lays ink down on top. With this heating process, the laser could possibly cause the transparency to bend and warp.
I use a simple $100 HP inkjet printer, and I run my transparencies twice through the machine and have never had a problem. Every now and then it may load the paper crooked the second time, but that's very very very rare.
As far as halftones, I haven't screeprinted any halftone artwork, but I have printed it from my HP and it looks great! Can't wait to give it a try~
I've used a basic Epson C88 and 1400 series printers with Ryonet R-Film Waterproof film with great results. The film is only like $110 for 100 sheets of 11"x17" film and like $52 for 100 sheets of 8.5"x11" from www.silkscreensupplies.com (forum sponsor). I get great images using Best Photo / Glossy Photo Paper settings.
No need to buy an expensive laser printer in my opinion if you already have an inkjet printer. If you want to do halftones, check out GhostScript (search forum for info). You can avoid having to buy an expensive RIP software as well.
Personally i consider laser printers as a cheap solution, not an over priced one.
I've upgraded to an inkjet, only because lasers larger than 12x18 are too expensive and impossible to find used. On my epson, i see the ink levels of 7 colors of ink is now down to about 1/3 full, even though i've never used it to print color. Each time i print a sheet after waiting a day, the printer goes into an auto clean cycles, which dumps ink of all colors into the waste bin.
For printing on lasers, i would suggest using 4 mil film, rather than vellum or 3 mil film. The extra thickness prevents distortions.
While most people blame heat, the actual cause of distortion is most time skew. With vellum, my phaser 7700 would literally wrinkle the paper when it was skewed.
My preferred method for printing with a laser is to manually feed the film 1 piece at a time. The side guides would be tight against the 4 mil film and i would ensure each sheet was properly placed in the feeder. The phaser was very happy to let me do this.
The advantage of laser printers is that they can make great film. When i switched to inkjet, i had to back the exposure back 50% to not blast though the less dense inkjet coating. The worse the exposure unit, the greater the requirement of good film. With a top quality exposure unit, either works quite well.
The advantage of inkjet is that while less dense, the image quality is better. Inkjets are happy to go past 11x17, how big you want it?
fred
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Ink-jet vs. Laser printer... 
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