[NFBCS] Recommendations for Single Sheet or Non-Tractor Feed Braille Printers

Sun Jan 16 18:11:12 UTC 2022

Hello everyone,

Thank you to Greg, John, and those who wrote to me privately about Braille embossers.

I've had several tractor feed embossers over the years from Enabling Technologies and View Plus. 

At work I have the View Plus Premiere 100 embossers and I've also used the Spot dot. John, I appreciate your input in terms of graphics, and I understand these printers excel in that area. 

I used  the Enabling Technologies Romeo and Juliette embossers in my college years 30 years ago.:) They performed well but tractor feed was the only choice at the time.

One of the folks who wrote to me privately said paper would sometimes stick together with the single sheet feeders. This would seem to be an issue with the humidity of the room where the paper is or how it has been stored, this was a problem when I worked in a printer technical support job for ink printers back in the 90s. 

The reason I wanted to move away from tractor feeding printers is because no matter what I do with my current printers, they jam a lot and I waste time feeing the paper through the printer, moving the box of paper to various angles to try to fix it to make it load  properly, and so forth. Sighted folks stopped using tractor feed printers long ago with fax machines and dot matrix printers so I figured our technology should also improve as well.

Greg, I appreciate your experience with Braille production, but if the printer holds cut sheet paper, in the same way that an ink printer does but with Braille paper, it shouldn't be necessary to cut any pages afterwards when printing. Perhaps I misread something in your message?

I'd also like to use the talking menus some of the newer embossers have. The tractor feed printers I could get at work don't have that option.

I really appreciate all of your suggestions and opinions. Thank you!

Kind Regards,

Beth

-----Original Message-----
From: NFBCS <nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org> On Behalf Of Greg Kearney via NFBCS
Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2022 11:02 AM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Greg Kearney <gkearney at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [NFBCS] Recommendations for Single Sheet or Non-Tractor Feed Braille Printers

I have used a number of embossers from the very small (Braille Blazer) all the way up to big industrial embossers that use rolls, called webs, of paper. I also had the unfortunate experience of having to maintain as sheet feed embosser, an Everest, that seemed to require a weekly teardown to try and keep the paper feed working.

Take it from my work at both the Assocation for the Blind of Western Australia Braille Press as well as working with the Pioneer Press in South Africa sheet feed embossers are, in my experience, not worth the trouble unless you are going to drop a serious amount of money on a web feed embosser which cuts the pages after embossing and from your description that doesn't sound like what you want.

Tractor feed embossers are very reliable. I have some that are in excess of 30 years old and are still working. Pioneer Press had some even older one. So unless you really need sheet feed for some reason and I can't think of one right now I would go with a good quality tractor feed embosser. Remember embossing is not printing and the weight of paper and the mechanical process of embossing add issues that no printer ever would have.

American Thermoform sells tractor feed paper in a wide range of sizes and with various binding system punches already cut in them. They also sell tractor feed labels. They will ship it to you for free as well.

Single sheet sounds like a good idea at first but quickly turns into a host of issues you don't think about until your sitting there taking the thing apart to clean and adjust the paper feeds.

Greg Kearney
Commonwealth Braille and Talking Book Cooperative

> On Jan 16, 2022, at 8:45 AM, Beth Hatch via NFBCS <nfbcs at nfbnet.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone!
> 
> 
> 
> My wife and I are planning to purchase a Braille printer soon for her small business and for my online courses.  I’d like to buy one that uses regular Braille paper instead of tractor feed embossers. I use a tractor feed embosser at work and find it very annoying. 😊 Now that we’re in the 21st century, it should be possible to find a good non-tractor feed embosser that uses single sheet paper. 😊 😊
> 
> 
> 
> We want a printer that does interpoint, prints graphics, and can handle various kinds of material like labels.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I found the Index Everest D-5 through Google and the Humanware site, but I’ve never used one.  It would be great if wireless or Bluetooth were available so I could print from the phone, I know that can be done with the Index models.
> 
> 
> 
> Thank you for your suggestions and assistance.
> 
> 
> 
> Kind Regards,
> 
> 
> 
> Beth  
> 
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