The installation of color laser printer is growing every year. More and more people use laser printer to print photography and complain about poor printing quality or paper jam. What is problem happening when using laser printer for photographic printing?

Color saturation:

Basically, the color calibration of laser printer is based on common paper (80~100 gsm) before delivery. If increase paper thickness such as the paper of conventional development system is over 180 gsm, the color saturation will be reduced. How to increase both of paper thickness and color saturation at same time?

Printing speed:

Slow down printing speed can take more time for toner transfer, avoid paper jam and increase color saturation. In the market, there are different types such as 4~5 ppm (pages per minute), 16 ppm and over 20 ppm. Fortunately, printing speed is possible to be controlled by selection icon of paper material. Recommended speed is 106~163 gsm.

Paper polarity:

Thank to the toner is negative polarity of almost laser printers. Use the paper with positive polarity for laser printing and it is possible to conduct more toner and increase color saturation.

Moisture:

Moisture tends to make pulp fibre expansion, raising paper thickness and uneven roughness. Coating skill perhaps is one of solutions to isolate moisture in air. Apply synthetic paper to replace pulp paper is a good alternative to resist moisture completely.

Thermal stress:

Many people recommend inkject glossy photo paper or premium paper for laser photographic printing. Be careful! The heating temperature of fuser can rise up to 200 degree C during printing. The potential risk of thermal stress is possible to melt-down the coating material of paper surface or crack happening. Particular, printing is operating at low speed. Thickness again! The thickness of those products is over 80~100 gsm.

Resolution:

Due to toner is dry powder in natural, the paper has no connection with resolution. The image resolution is decided by printer engine, toner dimension and printing language. 600 x 600 dpi can offer remarkable picture image quality. 1200 x 1200 and 2400 x 2400 dpi also increase more grades of gray level and improve better cubic effect for special application such as medical or military.

Testing:

The testing had done with HP CLJ 2500/2550/5500, EPSON Aculaser 900/1900/4000 and Konica Minolta magicolor 23xx. That means it is possible to overcome different printer engines for different printing speed, dpi, toner, fuser temperature and so on.