Vinyl for laser printing

[Nigel Fraser]

I may be completely wrong on this but I looked into this several years ago when I was making number plates and wanted to print them in colour. The answer was that you couldn’t put vinyl through a laser because the heat of the fusing process would melt/wrinkle the material and gunge up your printer. I know you can use acetate/transparency material but this is more resistant to the heat. As I say there may be a special material as there is for inkjet printing onto vinyl, perhaps you could speak to someone like The magic touch ? who deal with this kind of process ?
I went down the route of buying a small Alps thermal transfer printer and recently the edge2 which obviously are capable of doing what you want.

Hope this helps a little…

Nigel

[Brian Curtis]

The Magic Touch do a CL MEDIA for colour laser printers, clear, white, gold and silver. I have used this on my Epson laser printer with no problems. http://www.themagictouch.co.uk

[MARTY]

We have just been looking into this same printer and we make a lot of number plates.
There is a company marketing this printer for plates and small labels.
The demo video is brilliant especially for safety signs etc but as with many printers today first they say it will last outdoors but from the lastest we have heard they say a year or so and it SHOULD last twoyears (no guarantees).
So its fine for indoor signs and labels and stickers and will stand up to the meths test better than any inkjet, but they can’t guarantee very long outdoors except for number plates which are printed in black which won’t fade much anyway.
Lasers print onto polyester stickers and you can buy A4 sheets in white and clear from Grafitype and it looks and feels exactly the same as regular vinyl, Iam sure they could supply it in roll form as well if you ask.

[peely]

Thanks guys.

Have already spoken to Grafityp but they will only supply a 1220mm x 100mtr roll which would last us approx 10 yrs !

Have sent The magic Touch an email but it looks as though they too only supply A3 or A4 sheets.

Thanks anyway, I will keep searching !