Printing Album Pages - Dye Vs. Pigment Ink

My experience with laser printers has been that if the pages are allowed to get a bit warm in the album, the ink adheres to the adjacent page, or to the adjacent stamp. This never happens with ink jet prints. Ink jet prints are more susceptible to moisture runs though. Epson printer are designed with a fixed ink head that doesn't get replaced when you replace a cartridge, allowing for more accuracy when printing. This gives you a cleaner, sharper print but it also means if something clogs you are in for a lot more effort to fix than a HP or Brother where the fix is to just replace the cartridge, which replaces the head as well.

My latest is a Brother MFC-J6925DW, replacing a Brother MFC-6490CW that's pushing 10 years old now. They both scan and print up to 11"x17", which is a big factor to me, and the new one does wireless network, duplex copy/printing and much cheaper per page costs when compared to HPs. (Stated costs of $0.01 per page B&W with average text level.)

So do you feel it is best to use inkjet, rather than laser, to make homemade album pages?

I use the following page protectors will my album pages.

Toner also has a habit of sticking to the vinyl cover of binders.

http://www.staples.com/Staples-Heav...oduct_489131

Here are some costs if you're using genuine toner or ink:

Genuine toner costs $307 on Amazon for 4 colors, with a page yield of 2500 pages. That comes to 12.3 cents per page

Genuine ink costs $68 for all for colors with a page yield of 450 pages. That comes to 15.1 cents per page

My genuine Xerox black toner cost $ 125 for 8000 pages, but with laser you have to count the drum, in my case the drum cost only $ 125 for 20,000 pages, so here the maths for black printing

toner 1.5 cent per page
drum .6 cent per page
total 2.1 cent per page

this is a $ 1700 laser printer, the toner and drum of cheap laser printer cost way more.

Not a whole lot of differences between the two...However, I can take the PDFs to a local printer and print them out for 9 cents a page vs. ~15 cents a page on my home inkjet printer.

You're paying $0.09/page for color or black and white?

B&W

The B&W math was different:

Laser: $307/4 = ~$77 for black. $77/2500 = $0.03/page

Inkjet: $68/4 = ~$17 for black. $17/450 = $0.04/page

"Laser: $307/4 = ~$77 for black. $77/2500 = $0.03/page"

You forget the price of the drum

Ok, the drum is $100 for a set of 4 and lasts 15,000 pages. So for B&W, you're looking at $100/4 = $25/15,000, which adds about a tenth of cent per page printed.

At least for the HL3170CDW, which is the printer that I have.

Well, I print all my pages using an inkjet. I also hinge mounts to the page for all my stamps, even the cheapest ones. :)

I believe in the long run that inkjet will have a lesser chance of affecting the stamps than laser. If you are putting everything in mounts and the pages are only in contact with other paper you can save a bit by going with B&W laser.