100% cotton paper on digital press?

[wentworth]

Hi everyone,

Excuse me if this is a rediculous question! I have no experience with letterpress, but have long been after the soft matte texture of paper that is used.
All my designs are printed on a digital press, on coated stock. But some designs would lend themselves better to an uncoated finish. What i have tracked down as far as uncoated stock that is suitable for digital press was still almost coated looking. I think they call it 'calendered'. It was very difficult to find and didnt provide enough of a 'natural' look.
Im guessing the reason for this is that digital press would need the smooth finish to print properly/well.
But if anyone has any knowledge about a more natural looking paper that can be used with digital, or if the 100% cotton papers would be suitable??

[wentworth]

oh just to add, i realise that if the design was full coverage that you wouldnt get that soft matte look anyway as the toner itself would create some kind of coating, but i mean mainly for text only designs, such as a wedding invitation with plenty of the card stock remaining bare.

[X33]

have you looked at Xerox silk paper? it may be what you are looking for

[easiprint]

I think the Xerox silk may still look a bit too 'coated', as it is!

Successfully running uncoated paper on a digital press really depends on the press you are using. For example, today I had to run some wedding invitations on Zeta hammered board (obviously uncoated). Tried it on my Xerox DC5252 first and it looked awful, printing very patchy. Ran the same job and stock on my Xerox DC250 and it came out lovely.

[che.c]

For a really uncoated looking finish we use Conqueror Micro Laid. It's a bit pricy and is a textured board rather than plain uncoated but it does the trick.

For heavier coverage stuff it could be worth asking your printer (or setting these up if you are running the printer) if they have any low toner density output profiles. Obviously the print looks more washed out but has far less of a sheen to it.

I'll echo easiprint on the importance of finding a paper that matches your printer too, conqueror looks awful when printed on our X700 but prints very well (with a little persuasion) on the DC260. I'm yet to find a textured board that'll print well on the 700, though I haven't looked that hard because the 260 can do it.

[Amer]

The X700 will print textured board almost as well as DC250, but you have to bump image transfer up to 150% in the Custom paper settings.

[che.c]

I tried messing with the image transfer but still couldn't get it to the quality of the 260 - as I said, not a huge issue because the 260 does it. To be fair the job in particular I was trying to run was a full coverage dark purple and I was amazed at how good the 260 did!

[wentworth]

thanks everyone, i guess i will just have to purchase the samples of the cotton paper then and see if my printer will give it a go for me!

[TheProcessIStheproduct]

Indigo does nice job on toothy cotton like Strathmore, may be adhesion problem with heavy coverage, but does not have shinny toner look

[mac_man_luke]

We have printed on a heap of specialty uncoated stocks on both our previous xerox 5540 (same engine as 250/252/260 etc just no rip) and our km 6501 with great successes

eg today we printed on some heavily hammered 300gsm stock, no problems - all 100% fused and looked great. (high toner coverage as well)