envelopes

[davidorsini]

I have a marketing company and we do a lot of mailing for our clients. I was wondering if anyone had any expertise they could offer with envelope printing. I have done a lot of experimentation on my own and have come to the conclusion that I cannot use laser printers for what i am trying to do. We use a textured linen envelope (like resume paper) and the toner does not fuse properly. I have tried 3 different models with the same results. I have been using random inkjet printers to do all of our envelopes recently (Pixma 4000, Lexmark 4300, etc.). The problem arrises where the back feeder only holds about 10 envelopes and the output tray isn't much better. When we are printing 20K+ holiday cards this week that is a huge pain. Does anyone know of a better solution? I know there are specialty envelope printers out there by Pitney Bowes, Neopost, etc. but you are looking at $7-8K for those, plus I have seen them in action and the quality is not that great. I am happy with the print speed of the simple desktop inkjets and the print quality is fine. I am just paying someone $12/hr to sit there and feed it envelopes and it seems like there must be a better way. Any suggestions? Thanks.

 

[WhiteDog]

You do not say what your monthly numbers are. Commercial envelope printing in 4 colors is about $300/1000. If you are doing small runs of 100 or so for many clients then you will want to do them yourself. As with many aspects of the inkjet world there is no medium ground of high-volume, low cost, low complexity, and long MTBF. You could use adhesive clear mylar film labels, but then somebody would have to stick them on, which sounds longer and more $$ than your $12/hr person watching the feed tray, if it even looked as good.

 

[davidorsini]

We typically do a little over 2000 pieces a week. There are busier times like now though were we do much more than 2000. We don't do any color, all black and white... just a to and a from on the envelope. We made a decision a while back to never use labels because they tend to look like 'bulk mail'. We want our correspondences to look very personal. Also, pretty much every envelope is different... they are all to different people and from different people, so that would make it a lot more difficult to outsource this. I just wish someone made an envelope feeder for a generic desktop inkjet. That doesnt seem very difficult and it would make life so much easier for me.

 

[Nifty]

With all the cool home made contraptions I've seen posted on this forum, I'd be amazed if there wasn't a way to make some auto envelope feeder... at least to make one that is significantly cheaper than the $7-$8k Pitney Bowes model or the sum of the $12 an hour you're paying the staff to feed the tray.

Is there an engineering version of www.rentacoder.com or www.getafreelancer.com?

 

[chippedoff]

Hello.

First of all there is a technical reason for your toner not fusing to the resum/parchement paper.

I've worked with identicle envelopes and paper.

The problem arises from paper thickness and the amount of time the laser pritner's fuser has to "cook" the ink into the paper.

I've tried Xerox, HP, Konica/minolta. Each has a "Thick Paper" or "Thick stock/media" in the printer dirver settings.

To use any form of paper thicker than standard copy paper you must have the driver tell the printer to be in "Thick media" mode aka cardboard mode.

The simple explanation is that paper is a good insulator . Put two or three sheets of copy paper and it keeps cold or heat away from your hands.

Therefore a colour laser printer in normal copy paper mode will never adhere to your envelopes and the pass through the fuser is too quick. Also the toner will end up fusing to your drum modual . Then you'll have to run several pagers just to clean your drum.

Secondly if you are intending to print envelopes to that same resum paper you will be in for a surprise. The ink will smear. Unless you get resum paper like Xerox LX paper / envelopes.

You can get 4 colour printing with waxy ink that works. This is the same ink that you see in textured business cards. Though don't expect the highest resolution form that process.

Best of luck.

 

[IrinaKasper]

If you want to hire a highly qualified specialist and entrust your business to him. I advise you to search on the site
XPlace


Edit: by Moderator

 

[Roy Sletcher]

If you want to hire a highly qualified specialist and entrust your business to him. I advise you to search on the site ?


Edit: by Moderator

Hi Irina,

Good valid comment. Except you were replying to a thread over 10 years old.

Sort of thing I would do.

rs

 

[The Hat]

Very true @Roy Sletcher, but @IrinaKasper has made her very first post now, and hopefully she will find it much easier to post more frequently, the first post is always the hardest ..

Can you remember your first ? This will take you back a bit...
https://www.printerknowledge.com/th...empty-canon-cli-8-cartridges-for-refill.5460/