I’ve got a new printer and, of course, it’s got problems. Dell 1720, great laser printer HOWEVER: it will print regular sized copy paper(8.5 x 11) just fine but if I manually feed in a standard #10 envelope for addressing, the print comes out extremely light. It’s so light that I hesitate to send it in the mail for fear the post office will misread the address. I’ve reloaded the driver and rechecked all the bells and whistles on the printer (toner etc) and everything is OK…what’s the deal. HELP!
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The envelope may be coated
The printer setup may have aspecial setting for envelopes. I had an older HP, that required the envelope setting to print right.
Jigs-n-fixtures probably hit it, envelope paper sometimes is wrong to laser printing.
If you have an inkjet handy, a pass through that printer can tell you if the envelopes you have might have a coating issue (the glue from the address window in envelops caused enough troubles that actual "windowed" evelopes are rare).
Envelope printing is always dicey, envelopes want to "puff" up, not lay flat like a sheet of paper. That places the surface that the ink or toner is "aimed" at, at a different location than for plain sheet stock. That's why some printers have a separate setting for envelopes.
For the PO, the critical item to get on there is the zip routing bar code. If that's on there, that's what gets read in the sorter. The actual address is not read until pre-sort (if not bundled) by the actual carrier.
Dedicated label printer can sometimes be the easier, faster, cheaper, solution, for 2¢ worth.