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Eight Things You Might Know Not About Copy Paper

 

Love it or hate it, paper is still one of the main go to sources for communication and archiving.

Living and selling copiers so close to the ocean all of these years has made me almost and expert with copier paper.

  • Image quality issues, maybe your copy paper is damp. Yup, copier paper soaks up the moisture  in the air. When paper is damp the image quality will suffer. In most cases you'll see white splotches where toner should be. If you need to confirm that the paper is damp,  then take that same piece of copied or printed paper, flip it over and put it in the by-pass tray. Print another image on the back side and if the splotches are missing then your paper is damp.  The trick is that you dried out the paper with the first print when it went through the fuser section.


  • Spend the extra buck for better paper and here's the reason why, better grades of paper means that each ream is wax wrapped. Not the outside of the wrapper but the inside. Go tear open a ream of paper and you'll see what I mean, feel the inside wrapper and it's smooth. That's because of the wax coating.  Now what does the wax coating do?  It prevents moisture from seeping into the paper. Can't tell you how many times a client is mentioned bad print quality and it's because they took the outside wrapper off the paper.



  • Copy or Print this side up! You won't see this label on the wrapper for inexpensive copier paper, however with better grades the "Copy of Print this side up" will tell you what side of the paper to load in the paper tray. The reason for this is that reams of paper have a tendency to bow (curve) under great weight. Forty cartons of paper per skid creates a lot weight. Using the "Copy or Print this side up" will also reduce paper jams and who wants those!

  • How much does that sheet of paper cost me? A recent check with Office Depot showed a cost of $36.99 for a carton of paper. Each carton of letter size paper has ten reams that has 500 sheets of paper.  At this price each sheet of paper costs .007398.  Of course that price doesn't included shipping which could add a few more dollars. At some point in the near future I suspect that a letter size sheet of paper will be a penny per sheet.


  • Letter size or A4 paper accounts for the largest market share in the global copier market.  Makes you wonder why Ray is always pushing A4 MFP's!



  • Great way to solve the damp paper issue when the paper in your paper trays is damp. Go and purchase some 10 gram silica gel desiccant bags. Place one in each paper tray wait a few hours and the problem should be solved.

  • Loss of paper, where the frak is all my paper going or better yet, where did my checks go? I'm guilty of this!  Every now and then we'll run out of notepads, where's the next place I go? Yup, it's over to the copier, open the draw and help myself to all the paper I need.  Believe it or not this minor theft of copier paper happens frequently at large educational institutions.  Take the University that has 500 plus copiers and uses more than a million prints a month. A five percent loss will mean losing 50K sheets of paper each month.  Depending on their cost for paper this can result in a loss of $125-$250 per month. Adding paper tray locks can deter those paper and check thieves. Cool paper tray locks here

  • All copier paper is not alike! Ever wonder why you got such a good deal on copier paper?  Truth be told there are many shades of white copier paper.  There's even some white copier that looks gray when you compare to copier paper that 95 brightness rating. Brightness of the paper is rated on scale of 0-100 with 100 being the brightest. It's all about the reflecting more light. The higher the number the more light it reflects. Thus, if you want excellent color prints or copies you'll always want 95 brightness. You can read more about brightness of paper here

-=Good Selling=-

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Comments (5)

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@Art Post A quick perusal of the world wide web shows that a carton of paper isn't appreciably more, if at all.  It looks like some/most papers have the color lok symbol, but it is another qualifying questions a good rep should at least be asking/seeing.  Kind of like how once upon a time ADA compliant devices were all the rage and now it's just standard.

It's been a bit since I've commented here, sorry Art!  Great read on paper and why it's important.  Often times customers don't realize what a big impact paper can have on the performance and quality of their devices.  I always liken the damp/humid paper to "what do you dry your hands with?  PAPER towels, so why do you think you're papers damp?".  We've also used the desiccant packs in paper drawers, we've also had customer with really bad moisture/humidity problems get a tote with a lid of some sort and use those packs.  I also think the number one issue when it comes to "paper problems" is the fact that users aren't educated on how to properly store a half a ream of paper.  It's not always the root of the issue, but our techs will often bring out a fresh ream of sealed 28lb bond color copy paper to prove that paper is a major contributing factor.  

One interesting thing to note that I'm not sure many P4Per's know is that these new HP Pagewide devices strongly prefer/should be using Color Lok media.  There's a symbol on the ream wrapper/carton and is the best kind of paper to be using.  Most papers have this technology, but the homework side of it can be a bid arduous.  

Thanks for another great informative post Art!

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