This week's theme was chosen by a member of the community, where he asked us what would be the most ideal models for printing cards and invitations, we mean printers. We will try to be as clear as possible about the advantages and disadvantages of each model and which ones can best be adapted to your needs.
- What should we take into account when choosing a printer?
Each printer must meet your needs, because a person who prints photography is looking for features that a person with a small office does not need as much quality, but speed. But in our case, what are we looking for:
- Image quality: with these we mean the DPI, dots per inch, this refers to the sharpness of the image. Today's printers have high resolution, and most have a resolution of 1200 dpi or more.
- Grammage: this refers to the weight of the paper per m2, we are not necessarily talking about the thickness, but depending on this value, your printer will have a greater or lesser capacity of the printer to use different formats.
- Ink system: this is the process of the printer and it is quite important because this influences how the ink behaves on the paper and the cost of the consumables to use.
Now let's better detail the grammage part and the ink system. The grammage is the weight of the paper per m2, this means the behavior of the paper, while the grammage is high, different processes may require the paper, for more details we invite you to go through our previous post on the grammage of the paper: https: //emigrouprd.com/blogs/development-of-your-business/types-of-paper-for-your-invitations .
We continue with the ink system , the main ones that we are going to cover this week are laser and inkjet ( ink injection ), although there are many more technologies.
- Inkjet ( ink injection ), refers to the printing system with jet inks, the printer is responsible for launching drops of color according to the specified areas.
- Easy to use
- They are cheaper
- Great Resolution
- takes up little space
- Large grammage capacities
But it also has disadvantages :
- Ink reacts on contact with water
- You must consider the printing surface, because some glossy materials cause ink to smear when touched.
- It is not recommended for large amounts due to its capacity.
- Laser ( toner ), these printers work with an ink made up of pigments, where the laser engraves all the content on a photosensitive cylinder, which must be copied through an electrostatic charge. Said cylinder passes through the toner so that the pigments stick. Thus, the paper will come into contact with the cylinder, where the powder will fall and be fixed on the paper with the help of the same heat from the laser. In short, it is a printer that works with heat.
This has several advantages :
- They are faster and more powerful
- Greater ink durability
- Capacity for higher volume jobs
But also has disadvantages :
- It is more expensive than inkjet or inkjet printers.
- As paper goes through so many processes, it tends to get stuck, so you should carefully read the paper capacity of the equipment.
- Certain finishes can react with heat and damage the paper.
After this post we hope to have clarified the way these printers work and that you have a clearer idea of which one can meet your needs, in the next post we will detail which are some of the most used models according to the jobs.