[nickdynamite]

I am looking to buy a good laser printer to print on transparencies - for seperations in layout and use in silkscreening - I currently use a HP 5100 - but it doesn't seem to want to print black enough to burn screens from - any suggestions on a good printer that would print rich blacks on clear film or vellum?

Thanks for any suggestions and links!

[tooki]

Did you try increasing the print density on your printer?

tooki

[OreoCookie]

AFAIK ink jet printers are better at printing slides. The contrast is higher.

[nickdynamite]

Everything in the printer settings is set to as dark as possible - resolution enhancement, colorsync etc...

The printer (HP5100) even has a setting for different papaer types - which I have set to vellum because the only thing we've found tha works so far is a semi-clear vellum.

The problem is that, even though we're only printing black and white (or, black and clear) - the black is never dense enough (mostly in large areas - areas of halftones work fine) to make for a good screen burn - what we've been doing in the meantime is printing 2 of every seperation on the 5100 and doubling them up on the light table before burning - and running 2 of everything obviously is raising our printing costs.

Just wondering if there was a printer out there that was capable of printing dark blacks or if we should just upgrade to an imagesetter...

Thanks for the tips!

[OreoCookie]

Get a nice Canon inkjet printer for that job and use inkjet transparencies, works beautifully. A suggestion: Canon i560, separate ink tanks for each color, black and white is also fine.

[NYCFarmboy]

I use a very old Tektronix 560 laser printer to do my small silkscreen plates.....It does a pretty good job, nice dark plates/with nice tones...

however, for LARGE work (I do most of my printing with an image size at around 18x28 inches or so) I use a large plotter printer that uses rolls of transparent film. It is basically a big inkjet printer.

The only issue with the plotter: You can tell where the ink jet head goes thru on each pass so there are lines in your plate which you have to take into account depending on what you are printing.

If you are doing a 4 color print, the overprinting covers them up on the final print so its not an issue. (larger the print the better it will look).

If you are doing a straight solid color job, it works fine because you can just adjust your exposure time of the screen lower during exposure to wash out any unwanted information from your screen.