Hi Richard,

That was never my experience. Over the years I've used HP, Brother, Xerox laser printers, and those are just the ones I can recall off the top of my head.

I do remember back in graduate school that the department had a Canon copier that gave us trouble with transparencies. You had to use the Canon brand transparencies in the copier because it ran hotter than other copiers. If you used any other brand of transparancy it would melt and ruin the drum. On the other hand, that was a large photocopier, not a laser printer exactly, and I'm not certain but I seem to recall having had a Canon laser printer at one point in the past.

Anyway I do remember, now that you bring it up, that once upon a time I had to touch up certain areas of my artwork with a marker. If the traces got very wide the toner got thin in the middle. But even then those were traces wide enough to touch up with a Marks-a-Lot.

In any case, you are right that Gerber plotters work better, if you have the 5- or 6-digit price tag to pay for one, not to mention the money to keep the software lease current. And then if you have the temperature and humidity controlled environement to store the media in when it's not being used, you can improve on the performance of the laser printer. Oh yeah. You'll still need a light table and marker for touchups.

For my one-off purposes, laser printers and cheap transparancies work fine.

Joe