Transparency is no longer available as a selectable media output option

[It_Man_47]

Printing transparencies for use in creating Silk Screen stencils uses UV light to etch them. The black printed to the transparency needs to be as opaque as possible.

Various posts on the HP forum have shown this to be a problem and users suggested changing CMYK values in Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Corel Draw. The much vaunted Rich Black formulas (CMYK all at 100%) or Single Black (CMY 0% K 100%) do not fix this problem on this printer. Even HP staff have missed the point completely when asked about increasing ink density for this purpose.

Having tested this in all three programs mentioned and printed the options Black, Rich Black, Single Black side by side on the same sheet the differences are negligible. The problem of transparent black remains spoiling UV etched stencils.

What has made a noticeable improvement, although not perfect, is changing the output media in the printer settings. It would appear that this setting is what actually controls the total amount of ink (Density)  applied to the medium you are printing on.

Sadly, in their wisdom, (as noted by other posters on the forums) HP has removed the Transparency option in the drop down for media type. This has left us all playing around printing expensive tests (we use A3+ Transparencies and HP ink is not cheap) on each individual media type to find the correct density for transparency printing. 

Could HP please restore the Transparency option and/or provide a list of ink densities used in each of the existing options so we can select the one with the highest volume of ink deposited to give us the opacity required for our transparency work.

For others with the same problem I have tried Other Inkjet Papers and it does not work. I have just used Other Photo Papers and it is significantly denser and I am currently awaiting a test run result at producing a silk screen stencil.