New press-n-peel printer

After a mis-hap with our Dell laser and some acetate (seriously, Steve, what did you think would happen, putting thin plastic through a thermo-nuclear-hot fuser?) it was time to get a replacement.

Just over a year ago we tested a few different printers for use with both genuine press-n-peel blue (which currently costs a staggering £5/sheet) and the cheap yellow chinese alternative we bought (10p per sheet)

Surprisingly, we were able to go into a shop - a real, physical shop made out of bricks and everything - and pick up a desktop Xerox Phaser for around £120.

(Another) Steve at Kings Printers in Brighton was incredibly knowledgeable about printers, feeder ports, toner components and so on. He also did a lot of research on our behalf, contacting toner manufacturers (and a fair few "compatible" providers) before returning the same conclusion we'd already come to: for press-n-peel, Xerox is best.

And after a quick test with our cheap alternative paper:

Good, strong, solid black. No scaling or broken traces. Although we forgot to photograph the final board (it was etched, lacquered and put into a final product before we thought to photograph it) you can see the quality of the Xerox print for press-n-peel use.

In short, if you're struggling with press-n-peel (a lot of people do, and we regularly get questions about how to get the best results from non-optimum papers) you could do a lot worse than upgrade your laser printer.

A genuine desktop Xerox is much less expensive than we were expecting - and the results speak for themselves!