Printer With Built-In Printing Of Ruled Paper

[Essensia]

I just discovered that my new printer will print ruled paper directly from its touch screen with no computer or template files involved. Can choose wide, narrow, or graph rule, on letter or A4 paper. The lines are the classic very light blue, and the wide and narrow rules have a vertical left margin of the classic light red color. It does a really nice job.

 

I never would have expected this feature, and I love it.

 

Because it wasn't touted as a feature when I was shopping for the printer, I have to wonder: Do most current printers have this feature now? It really surprised me. Feel free to say, "Duh, Essensia, you're behind the curve and very easily impressed." :roflmho:

 

Oh, and the printer is an Epson Workforce 845, just a regular ol' affordable all-in-one inkjet printer/scanner/fax.

[jbb]

That's cool!!!! Now I'm hoping my printer does it too. What command should I be looking for???? Where in the printer is this function?

[Chi Town]

What a neat feature

[Essensia]

That's cool!!!! Now I'm hoping my printer does it too. What command should I be looking for???? Where in the printer is this function?

It's right up front on the main menu, which is a good thing because I never would have noticed it otherwise:

 

[jbb]

My HP printer doesn't have that option. You are lucky to have it.

[SamCapote]

That is a cool feature. It's kind of like once you see it you realize how it should have been a standard feature for most printers. It has me now looking at which printers can do that. In the meantime, you could make a template in Word and print them in whatever color and spacing you wanted.

Edited April 24, 2012 by SamCapote

[Essensia]

A template does have an advantage: Make a template with 2 identical pages, then you can print 2-sided and get a 2-sided ruled page.

 

The printer's built-in functionality prints only 1 side, so I need to run the pages through twice. But it lets me specify how many ruled pages to print at once, so I just need to re-load the pages once and print the other side in one fell swoop.

 

There might be other printers out there that print 2-sided ruled sheets automatically.

[bobs51]

What a great idea, Epson. Now your printer owners can use up color cartridge after color cartridge of ink printing their own ruled paper instead of just buying a ream or two at Staples.

 

Now that's marketing!!! After all, the profit is in the ink, not the printer.

 

Bob

[DanF]

What a great idea, Epson. Now your printer owners can use up color cartridge after color cartridge of ink printing their own ruled paper instead of just buying a ream or two at Staples.

 

Now that's marketing!!! After all, the profit is in the ink, not the printer.

 

Bob

 

Ever tried to find a ream of lined paper even remotely equivalent to HP 32# Premium Choice, or Neenah Classic Crest at Staples, or anywhere else for that matter?

 

I use templates to print lined paper on my HP printer, and vary the colors, including a dark green and various shades of violet, so as to have some variety, and balance out the rate each ink is used. Not a lot of ink goes onto a page of lined paper anyway, I have yet to replace an ink cartridge.

 

Dan

Edited April 24, 2012 by DanF

[SamCapote]

What a great idea, Epson. Now your printer owners can use up color cartridge after color cartridge of ink printing their own ruled paper instead of just buying a ream or two at Staples.

 

Now that's marketing!!! After all, the profit is in the ink, not the printer.

 

Bob

 

Ever tried to find a ream of lined paper even remotely equivalent to HP 32# Premium Choice, or Neenah Classic Crest at Staples, or anywhere else for that matter?

I use templates to print lined paper on my HP printer, and vary the colors, including a dark green and various shades of violet, so as to have some variety, and balance out the rate each ink is used. Not a lot of ink goes onto a page of lined paper anyway, I have yet to replace an ink cartridge.

 

Dan

 

That's exactly what I was thinking as the unique benefit of that printer. I looked at about 8 different printers online and didn't see that Epson feature. The only downside with the Epson is that it likely gives you a fixed line spacing.

 

Dan, the problem with my somewhat aging HP Deskjet 970Cse printer--unlike what I read about that Epson model--is the HP ink is not highlighter (and hence fountain pen) smudge proof. Does your HP model (assuming it's newer) use inkjet ink that works for your lines not smearing with highlighters/water? Did you just make your own template with the ------------------- or ________________ keys?

[Karen Traviss]

Just checked out my HP Deskjet 3050A out of curiosity (I only bought it a few weeks ago) and I find that it does forms, graph paper, lined paper, games, checklists, and all kinds of stuff.

[Essensia]

Ever tried to find a ream of lined paper even remotely equivalent to HP 32# Premium Choice, or Neenah Classic Crest at Staples, or anywhere else for that matter?

Exactly. I've been using the Epson (and templates before that) to make ruled sheets of HP Premium Choice. The printed lines are faint, so the ink usage is minimal.

 

By the way, that's brilliant to use templates with different colors to equalize use of ink cartridges.

 

The only downside with the Epson is that it likely gives you a fixed line spacing.

That is indeed a limitation. It prints only standard wide ruled, college ruled, and graph. I don't know the graph measurement as I haven't printed any yet.

 

Just checked out my HP Deskjet 3050A out of curiosity (I only bought it a few weeks ago) and I find that it does forms, graph paper, lined paper, games, checklists, and all kinds of stuff.

Now THAT is cool! When I need a new printer, I'll be shopping for these features. I'm hoping that won't be for a while yet.

[professionaldilettante]

I never knew that people actually needed to build in features like that. I have been doing this for years with Incomptech's lined paper, and i can adjust all of the parameters with it too.

[SamCapote]

Just checked out my HP Deskjet 3050A out of curiosity (I only bought it a few weeks ago) and I find that it does forms, graph paper, lined paper, games, checklists, and all kinds of stuff.

 

It's worth looking at the reviews at HP's own website on that model here. I was trying to find out about their ink to see if it is highlighter proof like the Epson, but it is not listed at HP's product page.

[wallylynn]

My office Xerox laser printer doesn't have that setting but the HP inkjet fax does! Seems like it's not built in, but rather connects to HP's website and downloads the images or something.

 

I just printed out a Maze, and the quality is quite terrible. The walls are sharp, but there's this overall pink/blue fuzz, like it was trying to print 3-D or something.

 

What color lines do the rest of you use for your lines/grids? I set my templates at light grey, but I think I'm up for a change.

[Alohamora]

I have a Canon Pixma MP560 with various built-in forms. It does music staff ruling, blank calendars, blank checklist, a 5mm or 3mm graph paper (ruled right to the edge!) and notebook paper. I still choose a custom Incomtech form for my lined paper however, since I prefer very light grey lines with no margins.

 

p.s. it has a handwriting practice form too, looks like what we used way back in grade school.

Edited April 25, 2012 by Alohamora

[DanF]

OK, here is the poop! I have an HP 8500A Office Jet Pro, on a Mac system. I got it because it seemed to have the best ink milage of anything I looked at. I don't use it for photos, just for printing out stuff from the web, paper, and occasional word processing tasks.

 

The ink seems to be waterproof - doesn't lift or rub off when wet, but the black ink does smudge some when gone over with a highlighter, if the highlighter is going across the line and rubbed with some pressure. Green lines are unaffected. Going along the line, in the same direction, doesn't seem to bother it. So it must be something in the highlighter ink that unbinds the black ink a bit. I have never used a highlighter on the paper though, had to go a try it just now in order to report this. I have never had a problem with fountain pen ink disturbing the lines at all.

 

My writing paper is printed from Incomptech ( I really like the Cornell style), and I just recently learned about the following site to generate italic and Spencerian guide sheets. Linugraphy It will do the slant lines as well as horizontal. The cool thing about the online parer generators, is that you can customize the settings for line width, density, and for Incomptech, color. The last notebook paper I printed had barely discernible gray lines, so looks almost like unlined paper. I think if I put that on a copier, the lines wouldn't even show up. Have to try that sometime. I've downloaded pdf''s of my favorites, so I can just open and print without even having to go on line.

 

The one difficulty I've had, is that for high speed (draft) mode, I have limited control over margins, on top and bottom, something like 1/2" minimum. There have been a few things I tried to do that it scaled down to fit those margins. I can set to 100% and preserve relative line spacing, but then it cuts off top and bottom on the page. I can override that, but only in photo/high quality mode, so it would take a minute or so to print one page, as oppose to something like 5 seconds in draft mode. Scanning and trying to print full size can be a real nightmare. However, for just printing regular notebook paper, it works very well.

 

One caveat about the printer in general though, I have had to call tech support a number of times, I don't know if would do better with Windows, but there seem to be a fair number of glitches with the Mac operating system. The good thing is that the ink/page ratio is substantially better than Canon or Epson. I think they have another iteration out now, the 8600, wonder if they are any more reliable?

 

Dan

Edited April 25, 2012 by DanF

[OakIris]

I have a Canon Pixma MP560 with various built-in forms. It does music staff ruling, blank calendars, blank checklist, a 5mm or 3mm graph paper (ruled right to the edge!) and notebook paper. I still choose a custom Incomtech form for my lined paper however, since I prefer very light grey lines with no margins.

 

p.s. it has a handwriting practice form too, looks like what we used way back in grade school.

Pretty cool - I have a Canon printer in the same family, MP990 and it has the same templates, which I never would have known without reading Essensia's thread. Now if I ever get around to trying to improve my penmanship, I can use the handwriting template with fountain pen friendly paper instead of going out to find one of those "Big Chief" note pads used to teach school children how to write.

 

Holly

[SamCapote]

I'm really surprised that Epson thought to make and promote their Ink Jet ink for that model as highlighter smudge proof, and so far I have not heard a similar claim from HP's inks. I may have to buy my first Epson printer.

[lovemy51]

well, well, well, my Kodak ESP C310 printer has that feature (graph, wide and narrow ruled, even a grocery list !!! thx for the post, Essensia!!