Re: Printer which can copy driver's license on one side and car registration card on another

s <[email protected]> wrote:

> A friend of mine is a small hotel owner in Florida and wants a printer 
> which can copy driver's license on one side and car registration card on 
> another and use only the required paper instead of 8.5 X 11 size paper. 
> His business is down because of the pandemic
> so he is trying to save on paper, printer ink costs. For legal reasons, 
> he has to make a paper copy of a customer's driving license and car 
> registration card when a customer checks-in to his hotel.
> 
> I searched and did not see any printer model used by hoteliers
> 
> Is there any printer for such custom needs?

You won't say any money on ink.  The scanner will bring in just the
driver license.  The rest will be white (the scanner's back/topside).
Many scan programs even let you select which region of the scan will get
saved.  No matter the size of paper (as long as it is larger than the
driver's license), the same amount of ink will get used to print the
front and back sides.

A ream (500 sheets) of 24-lb inkjet paper costs about $15 (price taken
from OfficeMax).  That's 3 cents per sheet.  You might find a sale for
cheaper paper, but quality will also suffer, like ink bleeding, poor
opacity, etc.  Printers usually take a variety of paper sizes.
Postcards will cost $23 for 200, but the cost goes up to over 11 cents
per card.  Sheets of business cards, about the size of a driver's
license, will cost you about 7 cents per card.  You'll need some
software that not only prints on a per-card spacing, but also
double-side prints to the same card.  Hard to beat the price of a single
8.5x11 sheet of paper which is easy to double-side print with most
printers (just by flipping the paper to print the next image on the
other side).

Why do you even bother to print a copy of the driver's license.  Use
your smartphone to take a pic of both sides.  Then store the pic online
with free storage, on a USB flash drive, a USB HDD, burn onto optical
discs if they're needed for business purposes for 7 years, or otherwise
use some digital storage media or service.  If, and only, if, you
someday need a hardcopy then you can print the stored front/back pics,
but only when needed.  "For legal reasons" requiring a paper copy, just
print several of the images per sheet of paper: front side of a dozen
driver's licenses on one side, back of the same dozen driver's licenses
on the other side.  Cut up the paper if they must be stored separately.
I didn't bother to look since it's not a task I'm interested in, but
there is likely some software that will print multiple images per sheet.
After, despite the hardcopy requirement, it's all digital images before
printing onto paper, so just print more images per sheet.