Article Printing methods for different label finishes

Different printing methods for printed text on  sheet labels with a laser printer

We often get asked which setting should the  printer use when printing on our laser labels. It very much depends on what label material you are using and below is a guide to what we have found to work the best.

Standard matt white labels and all additional colour options:-

Red labels, Blue labels,  Green labels, and Yellow labels in the printer properties, you should select “thick paper”, this causes the printer to feed the label sheets through slower and this minimises the risk of a paper jam and also a sheet slipping.

Gold and silver labels both have a higher yield of chemical within the label to produce the high grade colour.  Printing these on a normal setting will cause a bubbling effect where the label  rises off the page. Please see image below:-

 

To overcome this the printer setting should be set to “Transparency” this will feed the label sheet through the printer at a higher speed and with a lower temperature from the fuser unit therefore stopping the effect of a bubbled raised and poor looking laser label finish. On this setting the printer should also be set to print on the highest dpi rate (1200 dpi is good.)

Other label finishes where the transparency setting could be considered are:-

Matt White Polyester, Matt white Opaque, Matt Clear Polyester, Gloss Clear Polyester (there is a higher tendency for these labels to jam if used in an auto sheet feed tray as each sheet is very shiney and they tend to stick to each other. We would therefore recommend you fan the sheets well and make sure they separate easily  or use a manual sheet feed and print one sheet of labels at a time.

Labels such as Florescent Orange, Florescent Pink, Florescent Red, Florescent Yellow, and Florescent Green, tend to print best using the normal plain paper setting.

The Luxury plain A4 sheet labels are of a high grade paper finish and therefore are slightly thicker than a normal A4 sheet label so here the “thick paper” printer setting should be used. Printer setting of (600 dpi will give great results).

Date: 11/11/2010