Electro Etching - Figuring out printer settings

After much web browsing and forum lurking, I decided on getting the HP Laserjet P1102W to print the toner resists. To keep things cheap, I bought a refurb printer that, unfortunately, arrived with the output tray, as well as the upper cover broken. Blargh. Thankfully, Amazon has a pretty damned good return policy, so that went back.

The P1102W is a curious machine. It supposedly prints at 600DPI, but it has FastRes 1200 mode that somehow gives the sharpness of a 1200dpi printer. The "true" 1200dpi printers supposedly use the so-called ProRes 1200 print modes - or what I could understand from their PR blurbs.

While browsing the HP website, I came across the HP M201dw that was slightly larger than the 1102, able to print duplex, and... could print in ProRes 1200! And here's the best part - there was a special offer going on at Staples... 99.93 - from a usual price at 229. Got a unit of it :)

My first time setting up a printer using wifi, and that went surprisingly smoothly. Just had to press the wps button on the router a few times, install the driver and that was it!

Now I wanted to find a setting that gave the thickest toner and proceeded to print a sample vector image though Affinity Designer. However, all the changes I made on the printer or the print dialog settings gave me, as best I can tell though the usb microscope, identical prints. The print quality _appeared_ to be pretty good, though solid black areas had some kind of mottled pattern, mildly visible even through the naked eye.

Curiously, printing the test images as a raster image through Pixelmator revealed a rather different story. The edges weren't as crisp when compared side by side with the vector prints through Affinity Designer.

The two images here show a ~2cm crop of the prints. The upper print was a 300dpi raster image through pixelmator, versus the print though Affinity Designer below. The vector print is super crisp in comparison. You can also see the mottling in the solid areas.

I think this is a superb start, will report next when I attempt to do the toner transfer!