Pages

Monday, March 10, 2008

Thermal Transfer Printer

A thermal transfer printer is a printer that prints on paper (or some other material) by melting a coating of ribbon so that it stays glued to the material on which the print is applied. It contrasts with Direct Thermal printing where no ribbon is present in the process.

Usage of Thermal Transfer printers in industry includes:

  • Barcode labels or for marking clothing labels.
  • Printing plastic labels for chemical containers
Barcode printers come usually into locally specified sizes of 4 inches, 6 inches or 8 inches broadly. Although a number of manufacturers have made differing sizes in the past, most have now standardized on these sizes. The main application for these printers is to produce bar code sticker for product and shipping marking. The printers use a locally specified width thermal printhead and work on a paper or a plastic sticker, over a driven rubber role, which is called a collecting main glass. Between the printhead and the sticker sandwiched a very thin thermal transition volume (or sometimes more designated "foil"), which is a polyester film, which was coated on the sticker side with a wax, and a wax resin or a pure resin "ink". The volume is reeled on tape reels up to 625 meters (1965 foot) long and driven by the compression matter in synchronization with the stickers, with speeds of to 12 tariff per second (although 6 inches per second for most applications is sufficient).

As the label and ribbon are driven beneath the printhead together, tiny pixels across the width of the printhead are heated and cooled so as to melt the "ink" off the polyester film and onto the label. This process happens very fast and explains the fast speed of the printers and is immediately drying. Thermal ones printheads are frequently 203 dots per inch (8 dots per millimeter) or dpi 300 (12 dots per millimeter). Although some manufacturers leave now 600 dpi printers very small bar codes for electronic industries (view within the battery room of your mobile telephone.) produce ways of high print rates the sticker printers became very highly developed, if efficient processors and large storage capacities are printed with the same speed to let them produce the sticker pictures, like the compression matter. To achieve this speed, almost all thermal label printers use special internal description languages to allow the label to be laid out inside the printers’ memory prior to printing. Each manufacturer has its own language and some is very complicated and difficult to also work. E.G., in order to print a bar code on a sticker, send the steering computer a row code to the printer would please for certain bar code a kind and specifies its size and position on the sticker, together with as bar code to be printed the data. The printer used then pre-determined algorithms to design over bar code and keeps very exclusive for dissolution, by printhead, which cause optimum bar code on this certain kind of the printer one leaves. Barcodes have very strict rules for accurate printing, to ensure readability in a wide range of circumstances.

No comments: