Talk:Microprinting

Reproduction -- inaccurate

 * "When the note or item is placed in a photocopier or computer scanner, a line of microprint text will appear to the copier or scanner as a dotted line, which will then appear in the same manner on the counterfeit note or item when it is printed."

This seems wrong to me. Current scanner resolutions are well above printer resolutions and even home-use scanners are capable of scanning microprint (more than 100 px per millimeter). For printing, it may be different, but I have successfully printed readable 2pt text with a common office laser printer. --Jan 01:04, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
 * I had a go at fixing the sentence; it should more accurately represent the current state of technology now. Wingman4l7 (talk) 03:52, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Even SOHO-class inkjet printers have up to 9600x2400 dpi, which is aboput 378x94 dots per mm, which should be enough for moct microscript texts. --MrBurns (talk) 19:36, 11 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I believe that true microprint is defined as characters of a subpixel size, or smaller than 1px. Microprint larger than 1px is generally digitally produced pseudo-microprint or microtext such as that typically associated with MICR check printing which, depending on the complexity/security, may or may not require specialized adapters attached to the printer to enable the printer with local memory stored micro fonts.  David Condrey   log talk  05:33, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

How to reproduce microprint
A round-about method.. But you can reproduce microprint to a scale not possible by standard consumer printers with a standard consumer laser or gel printer (not inkjet) by using non-wood based paper (e.g. Rag paper). Whatever it is you want to print, print it at the smallest scale your printer is capable of printing.

Once your done, take your paper which you've printed on and soak the paper in liquid anhydrous ammonia. Take the paper out of the ammonia and let it dry. As it drys the ammonia will soften the fibers within the paper and create surface tension, and the paper will shrink a small amount (a few millimeters). Repeat this process of soaking and drying the paper and it will continue to shrink a little bit more each time. Since the paper is shrinking, it will also draw the printed characters into a tighter formation, thus reducing the apparent size of the print.

Repeating this process about a dozen times can produce dramatic results.

One negative result is the ammonia, and the tightening of the paper will result in your element result paper being more stiff than it was originally.

You do not want to use standard wood pulp paper because the repeated soaking will begin to dissolve or tear the wood fibers. You don't want to use an inkjet printer because inkjet ink is not resistant to fluids. David Condrey  log talk  06:33, 4 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Alternatively, laser engraving is capable of producing characters as small as 0.3pt.

Rewrote article/lead/sections
I rewrote the lead section of this article because it was stated that microprinting was .. and related directly to anti-counterfeiting. While this may be the most commonly exhibited usage of microprinting it is not necessarily it's definition so I separated such into subsequent sections and adjusted the lead to give the subject a more broad description not limited by it's common usage.

I also added several sections. One, the section on micro-structures I was unsure of but felt it was worthy of being noted. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable in the areas of chemistry and microscopy will later review and improve and/or expand the section.

Overall I hope/think that the article has been significantly improved. Removing citation clean-up tag since I've added numerous quality references during my rewrite. Added review cleanup tag due to my rewriting of the article.

On a side note, I would recommend re-titling this article as microprint rather than microprinting. David Condrey  log talk  08:56, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified (January 2018)
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Units and "Precision"
Hi, newbie here. Kinda fudged my edit message, sorry. It appears that the original conversions from 1/100 inch and 0.6 mm to "points" used the DTP standard (72 inches in a point, 0.352$\overline{7}$ of a point to the mm). There were some issues with floating-point precision and abuse of repeating digits (I assume 0.72 became 0.71999999... on the calculator display, which was incorrectly represented as 0.71$\overline{9}$, and somehow 1.7007874015748032 became 1.7007$\overline{9}$, which is even more incorrect). Then somebody came along and swapped units on us ("Microtext and Microfonts: Corrected figure"), switching from the DTP point to the American Point (0.71$\overline{9}$-aka-0.72 pt became 0.7227 pt) in one place but not both.

I went ahead and removed the overline from 1.70079, which shouldn't be controversial. I've also quasi-reverted 0.7227 to 0.72 to maintain consistency (thus using the DTP point definition). My choice of unit there may be less obviously correct, but at least it's consistent now.

It looks like convert won't help us here?

Autoinvective (talk) 21:11, 10 November 2020 (UTC)