Why use the Media Bypass Tray?

We advise all of our customers to use the media bypass to print their labels - if their printer has one.

Using the media bypass tray instead of the normal paper tray has significant advantages when it comes to getting the best print results.

• Unsurprisingly the paper tray is designed specifically for paper. More specifically, the tray is designed to take materials that are fairly standard in terms of the density or weight (known as grammage) of the paper. Generally speaking, paper used for everyday printing has a grammage of 80gsm. Sheets of labels will inevitably have a higher grammage overall because they are made up of three layers; the face material, the layer of adhesive, and the backing sheet. For example, our standard sheets of white paper labels have a face material of 70gsm and a backing sheet of 58gsm – in total this gives a weight of 128gsm – which is clearly more than the 80gsm of standard paper. So, whether you are using standard paper labels or a thicker, more specialised material, you will need to use a tray that is designed to take materials of a higher weight.
  
  
• The media bypass tray tends to be positioned just above the paper tray. When printing from the paper tray, paper will usually be directed through the printer by a number of sets of rollers. The position of the media bypass tray means that your labels will go through fewer sets of rollers during the printing process. This is a benefit when printing labels as the sheets are at risk of rotation as they go through the rollers. With fewer rollers to go through, the chance of rotation is reduced which improves the accuracy of the positioning of the print.

For more information and tips about printing labels, please visit our Help & Advice section of our website.