Printing on vellum

[piratesmate]

OK - I'm annoyed. :headeache: I'm trying to print my poems for the character swap on vellum. So far I've managed to screw up several sheets & won't have enough to finish at the rate I'm going.

I used Word to write out the text & formatted it into 2 columns - 6 to a page. Only the middle pair are usable. The top & bottom pairs have the 2nd & 3rd lines overlapping. I can print on paper fine...it's just the vellum.

My printer (an older one - Lexmark Z31) does cardstock so will handle heavier sheets. (It "senses" the difference in the paper, so there is no need/way to change the setting.) I was wondering if maybe it's having trouble rolling the vellum through.

Has anyone had similar problems? Any tips on getting it to feed properly?

 

[ajksmom]

Maybe the vellum is too slippery to feed correctly? Perhaps if you took a regular sheet of paper and adhered it to the side you aren't printing on it would minimize the "slip". Then just pull the "backing" paper off?.....
Let us know what you find that works.

 

[sweet maxine]

I printed on some very thin vellum this weekend, and I have an older (cheapie) Lexmark Z22. I could not back the vellum with any other paper, as it got hung up in the printer and would not go through that way.

Are you still having trouble?

 

[piratesmate]

Well that didn't work. I tried printing again on plain paper, because it actually seemed worse when I backed it with another sheet. (The vellum I'm using isn't real thin. It almost feels like 2 sheets of regular printer paper. It was nice stuff I'd gotten through JoAnns on-line.)

Now when I print on plain paper, it's messing up the text. This time it overlapped the last line of the 1st set with the 1st line of the 2nd set.

No matter how I print it I get 2 usable sets from an 8 1/2x11 sheet. What a waste!

 

[Franne]

I haven't had a problem printing on vellum. Maybe if you only print out 2 at a time. First do the top 2 on the page (out of the 6, delete the other 4). Then put it through again and move the text to the middle of the page and print again and then again on the bottom. I hope that makes sense. I think this way it's not moving through the printer so much and thus causing it to get in and out and maybe not slip. If not maybe use a neighbor's printer to print the 4 sheets?
Franne

 

[piratesmate]

Thanks Franne. That made sense. I'm going to ask DH for the manual when he gets home. It's a concern that now the text doesn't even print on paper. I think I'll just send them with DH to print at work tomorrow. I'd put these off for the past 2 weeks & now I want them done & out of here....NOW!!!

 

[jennz]

I printed on vellum for this swap too and had a problem with my sheets. I also had to set the printer to a higher quality print to get it to look nice. Have you tried to hand feed the vellum? I didn't have the problems with the text that you're having though. I also printed on transparencies and didn't have a problem with transparencies but I was able to select that as my paper. I don't know what to tell you about it, just that I had the problem too. FWIW, I did two columns for a total of 10 per page.

Good luck!

 

[piratesmate]

Thanks Jennifer. The quality wasn't a problem for me, in fact I was really pleased with the way it looked - where it wasn't overlapped anyway.

I ended up sending it with DH this morning. He's going to try over lunch. Keeping my fingers crossed.

 

[jennz]

Mine are crossed for you too.