Copying a piece of paper is probably one of the easiest things that you can accomplish nowadays. It will take you, like, one minute to print out, copy, or fax any document. That’s simply because there’s hardly a house without a printer. And, if you don’t have a printer, then there’s probably a library next to you that does.
But, it hasn’t always been this way. Actually, for many years, if you needed a copy of something, then your only option was to do it manually. Then, they started copying papers as they would create photos; by taking pictures and processing them just as you would a photo. Next came those huge photocopying machines only available in photocopying places. Lastly, we have reached the small printers; inkjet, laser, 2-in-1, and 3-in-1 printers.
Now, mostly your printing will be limited to schoolwork or your job. Yet, sometimes, you might need to create something a little-bit fancier such as holiday cards or invitations. Now, you can’t use the same paper that you use for your essays for an invitation. That’s why some printers are designed to take in and work with more substantial sorts of paper.
This paper is on the higher end and comes in countless variations. It comes in all sizes and shapes and may even be covered in a glossy layer. This is known as Cardstock Paper, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. As you cannot treat card stock paper like you’d plain paper, it needs certain precautions to be worked on without ruining the paper or your printer.
Check Also: The 5 Best Printers for Cardstock 2020 [Buying Guide]
Table of Contents
1. Check Your Printer
It’s essential that before taking any steps of actually buying anything, you ought to know what kind of card stock paper can you printer deal with and which thickness. Because otherwise, you’ll just be wasting your money.
Also, another thing is that different occasions call for different card stock paper so always know precisely what you need and whether or not your printer will be able to handle it. That’s pretty straightforward but may be skipped in the hassle of everything.
2. Check Your Media
One of the very first things that you need to do is specify for both your printer and your computer what type of paper they are dealing with. As cardstock is much thicker than regular paper, so, the printer will let up in space to allow the paper to move freely sans jams. But, if you skip that step, the printer will think that it’s working with plain paper. Then there will be no space, and that will cause problems and faulty printing.
Furthermore, you have to choose the right thickness of your cardstock as it comes in all shapes and sizes designed for different needs.
Read more: The 5 Best 11×17 Printers 2020
3. Check the Tray-Capacity for Your Own Media
Another thing is that you have to look up the users’ manual belonging to your printer in order to know how much can you load the tray. Because if you overload the tray, jams will happen, and you might very well damage the tray itself. Then, of course, it won’t work right ruining your paper in the process.
4. Specify the Right Tray for the Job
Now your standard, everyday printer has three trays; the cassette tray, the manual feed tray, and the rear tray. So, you have to know, always from your users’ manual, which one of them is prepared to take your cardstock. Feeding into the wrong one will cause mishaps with color and with the position of the typing. Needless to say, your paper will be jammed and most probably torn in the process.
5. Dimensions and Position of Your Paper
Always make sure that you are setting the dimensions of your paper in the right way. Cardstock comes in all sorts of dimensions, so you have to tell your printer the exact dimensions of the space where it’s allowed to print. Otherwise, you will end up with a half-printed invitation.
Another thing that could lead to that is the position of your paper. You have to adjust your paper in the tray as needed, like the manual. To do that, you have to use the plastic guide(s) on the sides. Move them accordingly to set your paper in place to be printed on precisely.
6. Auto-Scaling
Some programs, including Microsoft Word and some others, will give you the option or sometimes even a warning that your document is too big or too small for your paper. Now, mostly this message is not very conducive to anything.
Hence, the easiest thing you can do is to turn off the auto-scaling option from your software and just enter the dimensions of your paper yourself manually. 99% of the time, you will have a perfect print when you do that.
7. Orientation
This is, indeed, pretty obvious, and you would do that in any sort of printing work that you have, but with standard documents, it could slip. However, when with cardstock paper, you’re mostly dealing with invitations and maybe even Christmas cards, so you have to be careful with it. If your document is done to be seen in the landscape and you print it in portrait mode, it would look disastrous.
Maybe that’s the only case where the autoscaling’s warning will prove to be right, so always make sure that your orientation is what you wanted it to be.
8. New Options
Although cardstock, envelopes, and all these other fancy options for printing are very common today, they are nowhere as common as normal plain paper. Therefore, not every printer comes with the options needed for such procedures installed.
So, if you’re having a lot of trouble finding your way through the multitude of options in your driver and still not coming out victorious in the end, one thing you might think of is to search for drivers on the official website of your printer. You will find that it houses the drivers of all its products.
Final Thoughts
We have mainly covered everything that you might encounter when working with this relatively new media for the first time.
You might encounter other problems, and that’s where you can head to the official website of your printer and ask them. They will have professionals that are fully prepared to assist you. Also, you can head-on to the closest maintenance store and they will also help you.
Another option is to keep looking online to solve your problem. It’s very convenient to be able to print such sophisticated documents in the comfort of your own home. So, keeping some good cardstock paper in storage will never prove useless.