Discussion: Synthetic map paper

Does anyone know of a source for Préac synthetic paper (used for the public races at WOC in August)?

I assume the maps were offset printed, but if anyone has any information about Préac, do you know if it is suitable for laser printers?

Looking closely at the public race maps, the brown is not a solid color, so they were not spot color printed. They were really good quality still, and may have just been cmyk offset printed. For the actually maps, I think they were 10 color offset printed(CMYK + 5color O map + purple), which is a bit excessive for the spectator races.

I don't know of a source for the Preac, but I do know that most synthetic papers do not handle the heat of laser printing very well. I tried once with some samples and while it didn't melt, it did stretch and jam the printer up horrendously.

I'm about to do a run of bibs on Yupo, which is easily available in sheet form, and am going to have them run a few maps on it as well.

Forgot to get you the PRETEX, do you want me to post some down

Thanks Jim, that would be appreciated, I'll send you my address.

If you want an opinion on the quality of the synthetic paper used at WOC public races I´d say it´s not a good solution. I found the print colors be too much off from what the paper maps (i.e. what the WOC competitors got for their races) showed.

The "paper" is not truly white and the print colors - most noticeable for brown and green - were too dark and actually made the black thin trails - as an example - hard to distinguish in the mess created. Maybe you don´t think too much about it when you have only the synthetic print available, but if you put the WOC paper map beside it and compare you´ll notice the difference.

It made a lot of difference to my own map-reading at least - the combination of what I´ve mentioned above and poor eye-sight made it hard to read the maps and pick up important detail at running speed.

I've just started using Xerox's Premium NeverTear polyester synthetic paper, 95 microns. So far so good. Whiteness seems to be good and the printing company's laser printer seems to be handling it very well so far. It seems to be available world-wide as well. Very positive reactions from competitors at the first race that used it. Waterproof, tearproof, no chafing, scratching or breaking of ink.

Will be interested to hear whether anyone else is using this at the moment and what their findings are, especially whether they've tested the thicker 120 micron paper.

bubo - yes, I had the same problem with the dark brown contours, but I assumed it was more a print problem, rather than something inherent in the paper itself, which, although not as white as normal map paper, is nevertheless whiter than the Teslin we normally use (OK with our laser printer), so I was interested in trying it (assuming it can be used with laser printers).

nmulder - we tried NeverTear, and it gave good results, but the sample we had was a bit thin - maybe the stock you are using is heavier than our sample, so I'll revisit that option.

A response from Edmond Szechenyi, one of the members of the WOC organising team - "All the O’Festival maps at WOC2011 were 4-colour offset printed on PRETEX".

It was possibly one of the variants described on Neenah Lahnstein's website as Pretex for technical applications, as the paper used for the WOC public races was a synthetic, rather than the variant used for the Scottish 6 Day and Oceania championships (non-elite) races, for example, which was the standard impregnated paper variety.

I received some sample prints on Nevertear today, along with some sample prints from one of Fuji-Xerox's new printers (Docuprint C5005 d).

Compared to Teslin, the Nevertear is a lot whiter (and whiter than the synthetic Pretex), but the ink doesn't seem to bond as well as it does with Teslin (tested by wetting the map and rubbing vigorously on concrete - all ink removed from the Nevertear where rubbed, hardly any from the Teslin). Running the same test on the two Pretex maps - the Pretex synthetic was similar to the Nevertear, while the paper itself started to wear on the impregnated paper version of the Pretex map, rather than the ink lifting.

I never had any problems with the ink lifting from the maps in France, so maybe the test is a bit extreme.

The C5005 produced a respectable version of the Print Tech test sheet, adequate for most competitions, especially maps at 1:10 000 or larger scales, although as with all CMYK printing, colours would have to be tuned for the particular printer.

Ah, yes... synthetic map paper.

Brings back memories.

Ha ha, Riihijärvi map. makes me wonder why haven't we had any Yökuppi races there lately!