Tools of the Trade: Four Useful Printer Tricks

            We rely on our printers for everything from daily memos to important presentation material, which is exactly why a printer failure, malfunction, or restriction can be so frustrating. As your typical laserjet and inkjet printers can run a high overhead cost (not to mention the overhead of a plotter), seeing the largest return from your investment sometimes means taking an innovative approach to your problems. Here I aim to provide you with five useful printer tricks which save on time, and who knows, might just help you minimize on potential repair costs while pushing the limitations of your printer! Check it out below.

Print In Order

Your typical laser jet printer performs its print in a reverse order, so that the first page out of the printer is usually the last page of the document. This makes for a common sense ease-of-usage point, as most multiple page documents being fed out can be picked up and read in order. But for some reason a majority of inkjet printers still print in a direct page order, with the first page of the document being printed first and thus ending up on the bottom of the stack. Set up your printer’s default settings to reverse Print Order, usually found in the Tools/Options tab of your word processor. Quick, easy, and common sense!

Fill a Page for Formatting

If you want to see what a full page of content will look like for the sake of proper formatting, then you needn’t jump into a bunch of random typing, nor even copy and pasting. Rather, Microsoft Word allows you a helpful tool which will get your printing formatting correct before you begin your content creation. Simply type in (without quotes) “=lorem(5,6)” and hit enter to see a page with five paragraphs and six sentences per paragraph. As you may have guessed, you can change the numeric values, the first being the paragraph count and the second being the sentences per paragraph count.

Adjust Paper Setting for Higher Quality

If you’ve ever noticed that some prints come out look blotchy or discolored, this doesn’t automatically equate to a mechanical printer problem. Rather, the driver for your printer must be set for the proper paper type. Different paper types require different amounts of ink and in mixed proportions, thus you can notice an increase in the quality of the print by ensuring your printer has recognized or is set for the appropriate type of paper.

Formatter Board

Just a disclaimer: this one is pretty drastic so pursue at your own risk! Formatter boards are often the cause of many a printer problem, and one approach to fixing it proposes that putting a formatter board in the oven on aluminum risers can fix internal circuitry errors. Aluminum risers at 360 degrees Fahrenheit for eight minutes, and supposedly the formatter pops out as good as new. I tried it on a refurbished CH538-67004formatter and it worked out, but I can’t speak to the success with other formatter boards. It’s probably a solution only when repair costs exceed the cost of the system and when warranty has run out. Thanks for checking out these printer tips, and look for more content in the future!