Posted: 2/18/2005 9:05:34 AM EDT
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I would like to start pre-printing carbonless forms. I'm currently using a laser printer for most tasks and have access to an inkjet. I don't think that either of these will work for my purposes, however. Obviously, in order to print to all copies of carbonless duplicate forms, contact must be made with the actual surface of the form. I haven't been up on printer technology lately but back in the day this task would have been easily handled by a dot matrix printer. I do have an old okidata dot matrix printer but I'm thinking it will be a giant pain in the butt to get it up and running on a USB-only, WinXp system... the last time this printer was used was with a 486 running WFW 3.11. I don't even know if I could get a ribbon tape for it at this time. Long story short, I need a relatively inexpensive printer for printing carbonless forms. I don't need anything expensive since I'll only be printing maybe 30 forms a week and it wil be a text only black and white task but it will need to be reliable and easy to use since I will need to use it every week and staff needs to be able to operate it wihtout difficulty. I'm hoping I can get it done for about $200. Any suggestions? thanks.  eta: I use MS Word for the vast majority of my publishing. |
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I think you going to be stuck with a dot matrix printer which are hard to find or a wheel type of printer that prints only letters and numbers. When we changed systems to the new computers basically the printer makes several copies and you have to sign them all. You really dont need carbon copies. Everyone gets an original. |
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Mulitpart forms will require an impact printer, period. You can still get new dot-matrix printers and there are USB to Parallel adapters. A quick Google will turn up lots of sources. Looking through the WinXP Pro printer install I see all my old Panasonic and Oki dot-matrix friends listed there. I don't think that you're going to have to much of a problem. |
In my case, these are court orders that I would prefer to have filled out at the courthouse and copies distributed immediately for a number of reasons. I would like to print the caption in advance even though some of the order will inevitably need to be filled out by hand. I can print out one copy and fill it out and go to the clerk's office to get copies but then I have to pay the clerk $2.00 for the first copy and .50 thereafter.  My other option is to mail in orders with copies already made. This creates two problems: 1) Delay in entering orders 2) Ridiculous amounts of postage due to the shipping of multiple copies and the SASE postage. Another potential solution would be a laptop and portable printer. This would avoid having to write any portion of the order by hand. If you've seen my handwriting or even my printing, you understand why this matters. This solution, however, is cost prohibitive and otherwise cumbersome given what I am trying to accomplish.  I can have 1K quadriplicate forms created for less than $95.00.I think I will try to use the old printer and if it doesn't work, I will simply resign myself to filling out some additional portions by hand. 
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| You can most likely still find ribbons for that OKI printer at any decent office supply place. Unfortunately, USB and dot matrix are pretty much mutually-exclusive, unless you can make one of those adaptors work. It would probably be worthwhile to get a PC that has a parallel port so that you could use the right printer for the job. |
| If you have a form that lready preprinted like a rental contract made,when you print it you are going to have to have some sort of script or program run.Example it ner aera and info some other aera.eeds to put the first,last name somewhere on the form adress on anoth |