Best precision printer

[Artur5]

I tried both types of paper handling and got varying results with the centre paper guide type but excellent results with the left static type, try printing several sheets using 72 Dpi light Italic text in magenta or blue ink and then over printing in yellow, the variations show up more in the different colours..
Print speed plays a huge part..

You aroused my curiosity. I tested the Pro10s (upper tray-self center mobile guides ) and the Maxify MB51590 ( bottom cassette ).
Results in the images below. Guess who is who ?

For the record:
Font is Arial Italic 8 point. Total width of the printed line is 11.6 cm. Those images show a fragment of 6.8 x 2 cmtr.
First I printed in magenta, then in blue on the same sheet, using standard quality standard and plain paper in the driver. No color adjustments.
Scanned at 600 dpi, without sharpening or image enhancements of any kind.
As expected, cassette feeding of the Maxify shows a very noticeable offset, but I can’t find nothing wrong in the output of the Pro10s, apart from minor text bleeding which can be expected in non-coated plain paper. No, I won’t waste photo paper for testing this thing.

To practical effects, IMHO the Pro10s has excellent registration for a printer with mobile guides. As you said, speed might play an important role and this machine is indeed a very slow printer for text.

 

[PeterBJ]

A test with a 2 cartridge HP Envy 4504 looks OK at a 96 dpi scan. The font is Calibri 11pt (MS Word):

But a 1200 dpi scan reveals the less than perfect registration:

The HP Envy has got no rear paper feed nor cassette, only a "shelf" for paper. I guess the result is typical for all printers with bottom paper feed. The Pro 10 with its direct paper path in rear feed is certainly a winner.

 

[The Hat]

You aroused my curiosity. I tested the Pro10s (upper tray-self center mobile guides ) and the Maxify MB51590 ( bottom cassette ).
Results in the images below. Guess who is who ?

That is impressive, thank you for running the test @Artur5, that has satisfied my curiosity…
The Maxify has no pedigree when it comes to registration..

 

[Artur5]

Yes, cassette feeding is a recipe for terrible registration. I haven't tried my Brother laser but I guess it's likewise. Nevertheless, the Maxify sample tell us also that the error is only along the horizontal axis. Vertical precision is quite good. Ditto for the image posted by @PeterBJ of his HP.

 

[PeterBJ]

.....Vertical precision is quite good......

I think many printers use an optical sensor to detect the leading edge of the paper entering the printer. I think that if you try to improve the horizontal precision by tight setting of the paper guides in the cassette you get too much friction causing other paper feed problems

 

[Artur5]

They say that curiosity killed the cat but in this case it has been very informative.
After testing the precision of my Canon inkjets I decided to try with the Brother HL-L5000D laser. Of course, being monochrome it won’t so easy to spot the differences.

As before, the two first images are Arial Italic 8 point font and scanning at 600 dpi. Plain paper and HQ-1200 dpi setting on the printer driver.
It has to be said that the toner it’s not OEM but third party bulk powder and also that the imaging drum it’s well past prime, hence the less than optimal print quality. I don’t use this machine for high quality output anymore but it’s useful for speed. Prints at 1200 dpi as fast as at 300 dpi. Serves also for special purposes as toner transfer on metal.

First image is “single pass”. Second image “double pass”. Results are way better than the Maxify.
The se two first scans correspond to the top of the page. I include also a third image, with a different font, from the middle of the page. You see that horizontal registration is OK. but vertical not so much, meaning possibly that the speed of the paper carrier drum is not totally uniform.

As a whole, I think that precision is quite good for a machine with bottom cassette feed.

 

[The Hat]

They say that curiosity killed the cat but in this case it has been very informative.

Indeed, and as you have found out, there’re are some surprises to be found too, O’ you only waste your toner printing text at 1200 dpi, the difference is impossible to see, and 600 dpi is more than enough…

 

[The Hat]

My curiosity has now got the better of me, so I printed and scanned a potion of your post above.

I used my very old Brother HL-1240 purchased back in 93, it was the very first Brother USB laser printer made.. and I only use OEM toner..

The first has two passes and the registration is unacceptable and second one is just to show the results of text at 300 dpi output..

Conclusion:- Paper cassette based printers are hit and miss when it comes to reproducing good registration reliably..

(11 pt. Comic Sans)

 

[Artur5]

I found out that, in my printer, 1200dpi is a tad better than 600dpi and overall speed is exactly the same. Also, no toner waste as density of the image doesn’t change, hence the same amount of powder is used.

All in all, during almost a year that I own this Brother, my conclusions are that unless you stick with OEM consumables (more expensive even than OEM inkjet ink ) quality isn’t as good as inkjet when you’ve printed several thousands of pages, because the imaging drum starts developing small flaws as it wears down. The background is never as smooth and “pure” white as with an inkjet, There’s always some fuzziness, small black dots and artifacts between lines of text. This is OK for casual printing, drafts and so on but not when you need presentation quality. For that you’d need to use only OEM toner cartridges and also to replace the imaging drum every 5K pages or so, which would be very expensive and kills the purpose of using a laser for bulk printing at low cost.

I realize that this post should go in the laser subfoum, but as nobody seems to post there for weeks, at least here some of you will read it.

 

[The Hat]

I realize that this post should go in the laser subfoum, but as nobody seems to post there for weeks, at least here some of you will read it.

+1..