Laser Safe, What does that mean?

At first glance the term laser-safe might sound like it was lifted from the script of the new Star Wars movies. In the world of print and stationery,however, it is an important technical term that could mean the difference between having beautiful letterhead, or an expensive mess on your hands.

Consider the following scenario. A customer with a small business needs to have some new letterhead printed. She later intends to print letters to her clients on this paper via her office laser printer. She has a wonderful 4-color design created, and just needs a small run of a few hundred sheets. Looking at the minimum quantities for offset printing (often in the thousands), our customer decides that is way too much for her needs and inquires about digital printing. Her print provider looks at the design and tells her it can’t be run digitally. The reason being it won’t be laser safe for her printer.

What’s the problem here? What does it mean for something printed to be laser safe?

Well in our scenario the customer is seeking to have her letterhead printed digitally. Most digital presses that a printer operates will use toner, and toner is fused to a paper with heat. As your design is passed through the printer, the 4 color toners are essentially melted onto the paper. The problem one encounters is that each press or printer melts this toner at different temperatures. If you take a digitally printed letterhead and try to run it through your office laser printer you will once again be heating the toner on the paper. This can lead to that toner lifting off the page, and this can lead to to some bad effects.

One of those effects is called ghosting. This is when something printed on the page is repeated in a faint copy where it doesn’t belong. The result is a dirty  and unusable print–wasting paper, time, and money. The second possible effect is considerably worse. When you run the digitally printed letterhead through your laser printer and the heat lifts off the toner, it may not lead to ghosting, but rather to an effect known as ‘you need to buy a new fuser for your printer.’ This occurs because all that toner has gunked up the inside of your printer, and now you are seeing smears and hickeys on anything you run through your printer. Depending on the printer you run the letterhead through, this could be an expensive repair.

So what can you do to insure that you get your print project in a laser safe format?

Well, the easy option is to suggest that you get your work printed on an offset press. Offset printing, as opposed to digital printing, uses real inks that are absorbed into the paper, and they will stay there no matter how hot it gets (outside of burning the page of course). This does of course mean larger quantities of printing, but in the long run this can often be more cost-effective and save you the trouble of finding out the hard way that the digitally printed project wasn’t laser safe.

Second, and also rather easy, is avoid the office laser printer, and choose an inkjet printer instead for imprinting. The key here is that an inkjet printer, as its name implies, uses ink and not toner. This means you won’t be reheating the printed work, and can avoid all the problems associated with whether or not a letterhead, etc. is laser safe or not. Of course, the caveat is that inkjet prints tend to be quite a bit more expensive than laser prints, so if your project is large, you may want to consider other options.

Printing is all about meeting the challenges of customer’s demands. We know you want the best for your company, and we are more than excited to exceed your expectations. Sometimes though there are technical challenges in printing that make certain things difficult. Providing laser safe printing is one of those challenges.

This leads to a third option, which is to follow the key motto of all printing work. That is, Talk to your printer early and often! The great thing is that a good printer, such as how we view ourselves, should be able to lay out a number of options for you and your print project. And, although the majority of digital print is still done with heat sensitive toners, the times are changing. More and more the newer and better digital presses are using inks that are completely laser safe for any and all applications. Again, check with your printer to see if they are using these newer types of printers.

cutpasteandprint Printing, graphic design, binding, and promotional product specialists in Huntingdon Valley, PA. We proudly serve the Bucks and Montgomery County areas with superior quality, great customer service, and a commitment to getting you and your the best possible printed materials. Our services include: Digital Printing, Offset Printing, Graphic Design, Promotional Items, Bindery, and Copying.