Printing Secrets from Print Acumen

How to Prepare Printed Documents for a

Mailing House

The 'must know' secrets to save a lot of money & time.

The majority of mailing houses these days provide a laser printing service as well as a mailing service.

With the cost of laser printers reducing all the time, particularly colour printers, the outlay for an adequately optioned machine is within reach of most mailing houses.

An adequately optioned laser printer is one that’s capable of barcoding, OCR and MICR printing at a competitive speed with a sufficient duty cycle.

When supplying pre-printed documents and/or envelopes to a mailing house for laser overprinting a number of potential issues need to be addressed in advance.

Grain Direction

Laser printers run very hot when printing so it’s extremely important that the documents are printed on a long grain stock. That is, the grain needs to run parallel with the long edge of the sheet. If the document is printed on a short grain stock, it tends to roll up like a tube as it exits from the printer.

Paper Stock

Paper stock is of primary importance for pre-printed laser stock, the weight (grammage), thickness, coating and finish can all have an affect on the way in which the stock runs through a laser printer. Generally speaking, any stock considered should be laser guaranteed.

Grammage & Thickness

Grammage or gsm (grams per square metre) is the unit of measurement for all paper, not thickness. For example, a square metre of 80gsm copy paper weighs 80 grams.

Paper stocks of the same weight can vary substantially in thickness.

In the extreme, coaster paper although quite thick is only about 90gsm. On the other hand, 115gsm clay coated stock (art paper) is much thinner than coaster paper yet weighs more ie, 90gsm against 115gsm.

You need to be aware of the limits of the laser printer that your stock is going to printed on.

Coating

Coated stocks are usually not suitable for laser printing. Coated stock is any stock that has had a coating applied to the surface. The most common coated paper stock is art paper which has a clay coating and generally will not successfully run through a laser printer.

Finish

Many speciality stocks have an uneven and/or embossed finish. Most of these stocks will actually run through a laser printer without any problems however the toner tends not to bond all that well to the surface of the paper.

Perforations

For documents that are perforated so as to create a detachable section, the type of perforation needs to be considered. If the teeth in perforation are too large they may ‘catch’ as the sheets run through the laser printer causing misfeeding and paper jams.The best type of perforations to use are referred to as micro perforations. These types of perforations are ‘pinhole’ style and usually no less then 50 teeth per inch.

Ink

The ink that is used on pre-printed laser stock must be laser friendly which means it dries quicker with a harder surface.

If normal ink is used, it does not dry well enough and can ‘strip off’ onto the drum as it passes through the laser printer.

Numbering & Barcoding

Most laser printers can Arabic number the sheets as they run through and many can print barcodes, OCR & MICR.
Arabic numbers are normal everyday numbers that you see on every numbered document.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and MICR (Magnetic Ink Character Recognition) are both special numbering types that are printed with an ink that can be read by scanners.

Sheet Size

Most laser printer take a maximum sheet size of A3.

Inserts & Folding

Any inserts that are to be included in the mailing need to be of uniform size and preferably weight (GSM).

If inserts are to be supplied to the mailing house folded, they need to be roll folded and not Z folded, fanfolded or concertina folded.

Envelopes

Most mailing houses use machines to insert the documents into the envelopes. This equipment requires a larger DLX (120mm x 235mm) envelope and they must be lick & stick as the machine actually moistens & seals them.

For manual insertion, standard DL (110mm x20mm), self seal envelopes are fine.

In the situation where the mailing house is organising postage discounts, the envelopes need a Postage Paid box printed on them and all envelopes require a return address printed on them.

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