I’m talking about the standard white cards from a print shop or lithographer’s that you find in the card holders of bank tellers, etc. I.E., nothing fancy or photographic or magnetic, just the regular white cards.
I want to print something the same thickness, and the “business card” paper meant for printers is way too thin.
And I know my printer can handle much thicker, because it has a nearly flat paper path and I can print on cards cut from file-folders.
AFAIK, they are typically printed on 110-pound card stock.
Thanks
Yeah, what’s up with that? I like the cards I designed and printed on my own printer, but the stock is too flimsy. Is there somewhere that sells 110lb laserperf business card stock?
Probably not. That weight of paper stock isn’t going to work in all printers - especially not consumer-grade printers. A lot of inkjets take a fairly tight u-turn that the heavy stock won’t be able to navigate, and in laser printers, some fusers aren’t going to be hot enough to properly fuse the toner to the heavy stuff, and the toner will flake off.
So, rather than produce something that will only frustrate people, they don’t sell it.
If your printer can handle heavy stock, you’ll just have to do some practicing with a paper cutter to cut the cards out yourself.
I’d be extremely surprised, 110# is so stiff I don’t think it would curl properly in a laserprinter. Also, I’m not sure is laser toner would set right, but maybe it could. Most business cards are actually printed on a press, not on a desktop machine.
–Cliffy, former business-card salesman
You can get a decent-quality rotary blade track cutter like this one that makes straight, clean cuts easily. Just set up your layout software to space the cards a little, to allow for the printing of registration marks, which will be cut away when the cards are complete.
I’ve used 110# stock in various HP DeskJet printers w/o problems. I checked the specs and that was the upper limit, though.
I think most business card stock is 80lb not 110lb.
FWIW most laser printers are likely to have a very difficult time with feeding 110 lb (or even 80) stock. Possibly a rugged ink jet might be able to handle it.
The highest lb bond paper stock usually handled in big office lasers is around 60 lbs or so and around 30 lbs max in smaller personal lasers. I have forced small lasers to feed heavier bond stock, but they often jam when doing this.
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On my HP Laserjet 1000 printer, I just open the back of the printer for envelope handling and the card stock comes out the back without bending.