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How does Thermal Transfer Printer create barcodes?

Posted: Sep 16, 2016
A thermal transfer printer is a digital printing process that creates labels and signs by melting wax resin – based "ink" onto paper; tape and other material like heat shrink tubing. It was discovered by SATO Corporation, which also known for their smear proof images and interrupts to fading and suitable creating in barcodes. They are famous for printing bar codes, labels, price tags, and other specialty print jobs. There are mainly two types of thermal transfer printers; direct thermal and thermal wax transfer.
How do thermal transfer printers work?
The main function of Thermal Transfer Printers is its print head that handles the printing on labels and tags when the wax based ink transfer from the ribbon onto the paper. However, the print head is controlled by a microprocessor, which gives heat to pins to activate in order to build a specific image. From this, these pins are selected by a signal, which causes them to rapidly heat and cause against the ink ribbon, melting and transform the ink off its back film and onto the blank label surface.
The ribbon transferring ink in tiny dots of printing and every dot has corresponded to a dot on the print head. Each barcode symbology is the form of thin and wide bars, which defines the width of each symbology. The white space between printed bars is also fixed with its width. For instance, a 200 dpi printhead creates 200 dots within an area of an inch.
What is the difference between wax – based and resin – based thermal ink ribbons?
Wax thermal transfer ribbons are the most used for printing on the paper. Basically, the images produce last for years with security and wax printed labels need to stay dry and highly sensitive to chemicals and oils, which melts wax away, whereas wax- resin compounds work with smoothly and coated paper labels. The image formed with a combination of a refined and offers more durability than plain wax.
What are the benefits of a Thermal Transfer Printers?
- For making barcode labels and for making clothing labels
- Print plastic labels for chemical containers and tin packaging.
- Its images proof for greater stability in the face of destructive elements, which proof its durability and fade resistance.
- It also produces more accurate and easily scan-able barcodes, which formed superior barcodes which print exact bar width.
- Many thermal transfer printers on the market are PC – compatible that allows immateriality imports images and text from user computer to the label printer.
- It offers many types of print media choices such as reflective and tampers – resistant tapes to self-laminating labels and heat shrink tubing.
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