Paper and printer effects on xerographic print quality

This study examines the impact of paper and printer type on the quality of xerographic prints. Ten different uncoated paper substrates were printed using three different commercial xerographic printers. The print quality of the samples (print microgloss, print microgloss nonuniformity, print density, print and gloss mottle, and visual ranking) and the physical and surface characteristics of the papers were measured. It was found that relationship between print mottle and print gloss nonuniformity was dominated by the printer type. While for some printers, these two parameters were positively correlated, in other cases printer appeared to "mask" variations in the paper properties. Multivariate analysis also showed that brightness, opacity, basis weight, 75 degrees Tappi gloss, and roughness were the top five paper properties that had the most significant effect on the visual ranking and print mottle. Finally, as expected, print roughness was found to be a better predictor of the perceived print quality, however, paper roughness was poorly correlated with the visual ranking of printed samples (R-2 approximate to 0.5).