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Re: [LUG] Duplex v Two-sided

 

On Mon, 10 Dec 2012, Neil Winchurst wrote:

My new printer is shown as providing two-sided printing. I have never had this facility before so I would like to make sure that I have got it right. This is what I think is how it works.

Two-sided printing - the first page is printed and then the same sheet of paper is fed through again, this time presumably printing page 2 on the other side of the sheet.

Duplex printing - the printer will print both page 1 and page 2 at the same time, obviously page 1 on one side and page 2 on the other side of the sheet. So here the sheet of paper is fed through the printer just once.

I am ready/expecting to be corrected on this. Can anyone confirm or correct me please?

From my point of view they mean the same thing. Although there might be
some posh printers that can actually print both sides at the same time, all "duplexing" printers I've seen make 2 passes with the paper.

Even my old HP4600C sitting behind me - it prints one side of a sheet, then it sends it to the output hopper, but then it sucks it back in again to print the 2nd side - which is a bit weird, and it displays a big message on the screen warning to not grab the paper! It's quite efficient, as it prints page 1 side 1, page 2 side 1 - while it's sending page out to the output hopper, then it sucks in page 1, prints page 1 side 2, spits it out, but at the same time, it's fed page 2 out and sucked it back in again and ... etc. So for a single sheet, it seems to take ages, but with multiple sheets, it's relatively fast.

I've seen other HP's with a "duplexer" attachment - which is another box in the paper path that facilitates turning the sheets over.

I've also seen printers that ask you to manually feed the paper back in again..

So if your printer can do it without manual interference, then you have a good-un, and who cares if you use the words "two sideed" or "duplex".

Gordon

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