What is duplex printing?
18/08/2003
Duplex printing is the industry term for "printing on both sides of the paper". Sometimes, this is also referred to as "2-sided printing".
The benefits of duplex printing are as below.
- friendly to the environment (uses less paper)
- reduces printing cost (uses less paper)
- reduces bulk and weight of printed documents
For example, if you have a quantity of twenty documents to be printed for a meeting and each consists of ten sides of A4 print data then this will require 200 sheets of A4 paper when employing conventional printing methods. Each individual document will consist of ten sheets of A4 paper and each sheet will only have one side containing print data. The remaining side of every A4 sheet will not contain any print data. This seems like a waste of paper.
Duplex printing will print data onto both sides of the A4 sheets. This will half the amount of A4 media used to print the twenty documents. Hence, less paper has been used while the cost of the document has been reduced and the overall bulk and weight of the printouts (for carrying to a meeting) has been lessened.
Duplex printing is selectable in the Layout Tab of the printer driver. For example, in the new generation of C9000 Series printers the option to duplex print is available within a window labelled "2-sided (duplex) printing" contained within the Layout Tab of the printer driver. This is as shown in diagram 1.
Of course, the relevant duplex option must be installed in the printer if duplex printing is to work. This may already be installed in the printer as a standard fitting or you may have to buy this hardware option from your local dealer.
From the above "2-sided (duplex) printing" window, it should be noted that the following options are available for selection.
- None
- Long Edge
- Short Edge
The window that appears contains a small image of a book with the letter A on some of the pages. This changes according to each of the above individual settings. Each of the windows displayed in the printer driver have been shown (diagrams 2 to 4) for each of the available duplex print settings.
Note that the orientation of the small book changes to each of the settings shown below. This is used to inform the end-user of the resultant printout which will be achieved according to each of the settings available for duplex printing.
If the book is
then the resultant printout will appear as one-sided printing when arranged in the format of a reading book.
If the book is
then the resultant printout will appear as two-sided printing when arranged in the format of a reading book. Note that spine of this reading book is along the long edge of the paper. Hence, "long edge" duplex printing.
If the book is
then the
resultant printout will appear as two-sided
printing when arranged in the format of a reading book.
Note that the spine of this reading book is along the short edge of
the paper. Hence, "short edge" duplex
printing.
