What Printer to Use?

[dick53]

Hi
I am new hear and just want to say hello to everyone. By the way my name is Richard.
Now down to my question. I print the membership cards for my club, about 700 of them to be exact. They are printed on a preformed card and just need overprinting. Unfortunately the card only measures 8.5cm wide x 10cm high. I previouse ptinted them on a HP DEskjet D1500 printer but this necessitated feeding them in 1 by 1 and sometimes they went crooked. This method took all day to print.
Does anyone no of a reasonably priced inkjet that will do the job in the same way as with a normal printer. I think all I need is a printer that has a cradle which will take this size card but I can't find one.
Any help would be appreciated.
Regards
Richard

 

[The Hat]

dick53

Richard the answer to your question is any printer other than HP.
Most of them that have a back feeder will take card stock through without any problems in just over an hour in your case and can be picked up very cheaply. Hope this helps..

 

[dick53]

Thanks a lot for the advice. Is there any particular printer I should look at, I would appreciate any sdvice.
Nothing expensive and cheap on the Inks if possible.

 

[ghwellsjr]

When you say overprinting, is that the same as borderless printing? If so, that card size is not one that most printers will allow borderless printing for and if you cheat somehow, you will end up with a lot of ink deposited in side the printer instead of one a piece of the absorbent material designed to receive over spray from borderless printing.

 

[dick53]

No, these card are preproduced by a Printing Firm in a set format. All the overprining is to enter the persons name and the Expiry Date. This is achieved by use of Microsoft Office and Mail Merge. That is why the cards are quite small and cannot be altered as we have thousands of them. I need a way to feed them through a cheap Injet Printer without have to put them through 1 by 1.

 

[d1hamby]

What about using a standard 8.5" X 11" letter sized piece of card stock that one your cards snuggly fits in and feeding that through the printer? You could even back it with a sheet of paper if needed.

 

[fotofreek]

Richard - That's roughly 3.5x4 inches. If you are only printing a name and expiration date on a preprinted card I expect that most inkjet printers could handle it. From the mechanical viewpoint, cut several pieces of paper or cardstock the same size as your cards and of a similar weight and thickness and go to a store that has several demonstrator printers. See if the feed mechanism can hancle it. If it can, the next step is to see if one of your membership cards will feed properly. The next problems will be, does the membership card have a surface that will accept inkjet inks and, if so, will not smear or run when damp or wet. There are dye-based and pigment based inkjet printers and one may work better than the other for these cards.

 

[The Hat]

dick53

Richard there is a lot of very good printers out there and I tend to favour canon at the moment. You can pick one up for little or nothing now but pay later with the cost of ink. The canon printer will do precisely what you want no problem, but you may have to consider refilling the cartridges in the future. If you can get a second hand one all the better because the older ones are not as hungry for your money and are a much better built printer. All the canons will handle 8.5 x 10cm card with ease..