Continuous stationery (UK) or continuous form paper (US) is paper which is designed for use with dot-matrix and line printers with appropriate paper-feed mechanisms. Other names include fan-fold paper, sprocket-feed paper, burst paper, lineflow (New Zealand), tractor-feed paper, and pin-feed paper. It can be single-ply (usually woodfree uncoated paper) or multi-ply (either with carbon paper between the paper layers, or multiple layers of carbonless copy paper), often described as multipart stationery or forms. Continuous stationery is often used when the final print medium is less critical in terms of the appearance at the edges, and when continuously connected individual sheets are not inconvenient for the application. Individual sheets can be separated at the perforation (leaving a slight serration), and sheets also have edges with punched holes, which also can be removed at the perforation (one typical format).
Most continuous form paper is punched longitudinally along both edges with regularly spaced engagement holes that engage with sprocket wheels or toothed belts on the "tractor" which move the paper through the printer. It is usually perforated transversely with a line of closely spaced holes or slits which form a tear edge that allows it to be torn neatly into separate pages after printing; when fed through the printer the paper is simply a continuous sheet.
Continuous form paper edge perforations
After printing the separated sheets can be held in binders by using the sprocket holes when simply required as a record. Alternatively some types of continuous form paper also have longitudinal perforations along each edge inside the engagement holes, allowing the strips with sprocket holes to be torn off the printed page.
The tear perforations may be short slits, which leave noticeable serrations when torn apart, acceptable for many business documents such as invoices or basic data (such as computer code). Where better appearance is necessary the perforations can be much finer, leaving an almost perfectly smooth edge (microperforations, microperf for short).
Continuous form paper of all types remains in production, although largely supplanted with the introduction of fast laser printers with single-sheet feed. Continuous stationery printed on a suitable printer is typically cheaper than laser printing although the output is of lower quality. If an impact printer is used multiple simultaneous copies can be printed on multipart forms. Many laser printers can print on both sides of the paper (duplex printing), which is not possible with continuous stationery.
Standard perforations are 5/32 inch in diameter (3.96875mm, sometimes called 4mm) and are spaced at 1⁄2 inch (13mm) center-to-center. Tear-off horizontal perforations at page top/bottom are exactly in-between standard perforations, at whatever regular interval is used for that particular paper.
When the perforated edges of the paper are manufactured so that they tear off the pages in strips, those strips are known as "perfory."[1]
Common types
Common perforation types for continuous form paperPreprinted green bar continuous form paper
The highest grade of continuous form paper uses a heavy bond weight similar to typing paper. Perforations are very small and close together, referred to as microperforations or microperf, to allow the sheets to be separated and the sprocket hole strip ("perfory," see "Shape and Form" section) torn off leaving a very smooth edge almost as if guillotine-cut.[2]
The cheapest grade of continuous form paper is often preprinted with bars of light green lines across its width, to facilitate following a line of information across the page, a type commonly referred to as green bar,[3]music or music-ruled paper.[4] It is a very lightweight bond, usually without slit perforations to remove the engagement hole strips.
Common sizes in North America:
241mm x 279mm (9.5in x 11in)
381mm x 279mm (15in x 11in)
In Europe, both 11 and 12-inch (279 and 305mm) form heights were common, the latter closely approaching the A4 standard sheet size (297mm, 11.7in).
Printing, separation and binding
Printing
Printing on continuous forms was at one time the basis for many business operations, not the least of which the direct mail industry. Reader's Digest and Publisher's Clearing House relied heavily on these forms to promote their products (most often via sweepstakes), issue billing, address form letter correspondence, and manage their own business data needs. Continuous form paper is used in some of the fastest types of printing systems, some of which print text at a rate of 20,000 lpm (lines per minute). This will produce about 400 pages per minute, using about 8-11 large boxes of paper for every hour of printing (affected by character density, and other details such as paper weight).[5][6] Direct mail, as an industry overall, has been accused of being environmentally unfriendly, due to a high percentage of the mail being discarded without being read.
Decollator
A decollator and a burster
A decollator separates multi-part continuous form paper into separate stacks of one-part continuous form paper and may also remove the carbon paper.
Burster
"Burster" redirects here. For the class of binary star, see X-ray burster.
A burster is a machine that separates one-part continuous form paper into separate, individual, sheets along the transverse perforations. A burster was typically used with printed continuous form paper applications such as mass-mail advertising, invoices, and account statements. The machine has two sets of rollers; the first (infeed) runs at a given speed, the second (outfeed) located a specific distance away, running at a higher speed. The first form is gripped by the infeed roller and moves under the second roller. Due to the higher speed, the forms is stretched taut, forcing the perforation against a knife, thus separating the form from the continuous form. The continuous form paper then advances into the feed rollers to burst the next sheet. Bursting is often a high-speed process that allows the continuous form paper to feed in at a steady rate, with burst pages either stacked or fed into a single-sheet conveyance to the next paper processing stage. Burster equipment and paper manufactures had to generate perforation specifications so that the paper perforations reliably separated under the force of pulling the sheets apart and not tear down into the printed part of the sheet.
Listing of a large computer program on continuous form paper, bound in a printout binder.
Large continuous documents might not be split into separate sheets. By continuously folding two single sided printed sheets back-to-back and binding together a stack of continuous form paper along one of the folded edges, it is possible to flip through the stack like a book of double-sided printed pages. With this technique, the stack is normally flipped top to bottom or bottom to top rather than side to side.
History
This paper type was developed for use with autographic registers around 1910, was later adopted by tabulating machines beginning in the 1920s,[7] and its use grew with the introduction of commercial computers in the 1950s. IBM cards, preprinted, optionally numbered and pre-punched, were available as continuous form cards and were used for checks and other documents.[8] Continuous form paper became widely used and well known to the general public in the 1980s due to the development of microcomputers and inexpensive dot-matrix consumer printers.
Continuous form paper began to disappear from the consumer market in the 1990s as desktop publishing, and WYSIWYG document generation became more popular and widespread. Consumers were willing to pay more to get a laser printer or inkjet printer that could produce near-typeset-quality documents. These printers accept standard size cut sheets (letter, legal or A4) of paper and do not require continuous form paper. Continuous form paper continues to be used in specialty commercial and industrial markets and, as of 2021, is still available in the US from large retailers of office supplies such as OfficeMax and Staples.
In computing, a printer is a peripheral machine which makes a persistent representation of graphics or text, usually on paper. While most output is human-readable, bar code printers are an example of an expanded use for printers. Different types of printers include 3D printers, inkjet printers, laser printers, and thermal printers.
A plotter is a machine that produces vector graphics drawings. Plotters draw lines on paper using a pen, or in some applications, use a knife to cut a material like vinyl or leather. In the latter case, they are sometimes known as a cutting plotter.
A line printer prints one entire line of text before advancing to another line. Most early line printers were impact printers.
Punched tape or perforated paper tape is a form of data storage device that consists of a long strip of paper through which small holes are punched. It was developed from and was subsequently used alongside punched cards, the difference being that the tape is continuous.
Laser printing is an electrostatic digital printing process. It produces high-quality text and graphics by repeatedly passing a laser beam back and forth over a negatively charged cylinder called a "drum" to define a differentially charged image. The drum then selectively collects electrically charged powdered ink (toner), and transfers the image to paper, which is then heated to permanently fuse the text, imagery, or both, to the paper. As with digital photocopiers, laser printers employ a xerographic printing process. Laser printing differs from traditional xerography as implemented in analog photocopiers in that in the latter, the image is formed by reflecting light off an existing document onto the exposed drum.
Dot matrix printing, sometimes called impact matrix printing, is a computer printing process in which ink is applied to a surface using a relatively low-resolution dot matrix for layout. Dot matrix printers are a type of impact printer that prints using a fixed number of pins or wires and typically use a print head that moves back and forth or in an up-and-down motion on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper. They were also known as serial dot matrix printers. Unlike typewriters or line printers that use a similar print mechanism, a dot matrix printer can print arbitrary patterns and not just specific characters.
Stationery refers to commercially manufactured writing materials, including cut paper, envelopes, writing implements, continuous form paper, and other office supplies. Stationery includes materials to be written on by hand or by equipment such as computer printers.
A perforation is a small hole in a thin material or web. There is usually more than one perforation in an organized fashion, where all of the holes collectively are called a perforation. The process of creating perforations is called perforating, which involves removing bits of the workpiece with a tool. Old-fashioned lick-and-stick postage stamps are perforated. When a tool makes small cuts in the material it is called 'rouletting', because that tool often resembles a roulette wheel, with blades around the edge. Raffle tickets are a good example of rouletting.
In computing, spooling is a specialized form of multi-programming for the purpose of copying data between different devices. In contemporary systems, it is usually used for mediating between a computer application and a slow peripheral, such as a printer. Spooling allows programs to "hand off" work to be done by the peripheral and then proceed to other tasks, or to not begin until input has been transcribed. A dedicated program, the spooler, maintains an orderly sequence of jobs for the peripheral and feeds it data at its own rate. Conversely, for slow input peripherals, such as a card reader, a spooler can maintain a sequence of computational jobs waiting for data, starting each job when all of the relevant input is available; see batch processing. The spool itself refers to the sequence of jobs, or the storage area where they are held. In many cases, the spooler is able to drive devices at their full rated speed with minimal impact on other processing.
Offset printing is a common printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on the repulsion of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planographic) image carrier. Ink rollers transfer ink to the image areas of the image carrier, while a water roller applies a water-based film to the non-image areas.
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing for producing many copies by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against individual sheets of paper or a continuous roll of paper. A worker composes and locks movable type into the "bed" or "chase" of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type, which creates an impression on the paper.
Thermal printing is a digital printing process which produces a printed image by passing paper with a thermochromic coating, commonly known as thermal paper, over a print head consisting of tiny electrically heated elements. The coating turns black in the areas where it is heated, producing an image.
A folding machine is a machine used primarily for the folding of paper. Folding is the sharp-edged bending of paper webs or sheets under pressure at a prepared or unprepared bending point along a straight line according to specified dimensions and folding layouts. Paper can be folded with either a buckle or a knife; thus, there are generally three types of folding machines: buckle folders, knife folders or a combination of these two types. Whilst buckle folding is the more popular of the two methods, knife folding is sometimes preferable. Folding machine models vary in sophistication, with high-end machines capable of processing more complex folding jobs and unusual paper forms. Organizations required to undertake mass mail-out campaigns often employ folding machines to improve efficiency. However it is very commonly used finishing process across the printing industry.
A minilab is a small photographic developing and printing system or machine, as opposed to large centralized photo developing labs. Many retail stores use film or digital minilabs to provide on-site photo finishing services.
A label printer is a computer printer that prints on self-adhesive label material and/or card-stock (tags). A label printer with built-in keyboard and display for stand-alone use is often called a label maker. Label printers are different from ordinary printers because they need to have special feed mechanisms to handle rolled stock, or tear sheet (fanfold) stock. Common connectivity for label printers include RS-232 serial, Universal Serial Bus (USB), parallel, Ethernet and various kinds of wireless. Label printers have a wide variety of applications, including supply chain management, retail price marking, packaging labels, blood and laboratory specimen marking, and fixed assets management.
Film perforations, also known as perfs and sprocket holes, are the holes placed in the film stock during manufacturing and used for transporting and steadying the film. Films may have different types of perforations depending on film gauge, film format, and intended usage. Perforations are also used as a standard measuring reference within certain camera systems to refer to the size of the frame.
Bookbinding is the process of building a book, usually in codex format, from an ordered stack of paper sheets with one's hands and tools, or in modern publishing, by a series of automated processes. Firstly, one binds the sheets of papers along an edge with a thick needle and strong thread. One can also use loose-leaf rings, binding posts, twin-loop spine coils, plastic spiral coils, and plastic spine combs, but they last for a shorter time. Next, one encloses the bound stack of paper in a cover. Finally, one places an attractive cover onto the boards, and features the publisher's information and artistic decorations.
The IBM 3800 is a discontinued laser printer designed and manufactured by IBM. It was the first commercially available laser printer. It was a continuous form laser printer, meaning that it printed onto a continuous long sheet of paper.
Multipart stationery is paper that is blank, or preprinted as a form to be completed, comprising a stack of several copies, either on carbonless paper or plain paper, interleaved with carbon paper. The stationery may be bound into books with tear-out sheets to be filled in manually, continuous stationery for use in suitable computer printers, or as individual stacks, usually crimped together.
The Honeywell Page Printing System (PPS) announced in 1974, is notable because it was the first commercially successful high speed non-impact printer. It could produce output at up to 18,000 lines per minute, where the earlier Xerox 1200 ran at 4000 lines per minute and the contemporary IBM 3211, ran at 2000 lines per minute. Most printer history has focused on the later IBM 3800 and the Xerox 9700.
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