Archive for July, 2008

New Thermal Transfer Ribbon
Posted by Dana Ritchie on July 28th, 2008

DNP has released a new thermal transfer ribbon called the W127 that works in all thermal transfer printers. It is a wax formulation that is 15% longer than the traditional 1,476′ for a Zebra printer and 984′ for a Datamax or Sato printer. You ask, how can this be? It is because they use a thinner carrier or liner. It has the same OD (outer dimensions) as the standard OEM ribbons, but there is more length per roll. This ribbon is not only less expensive per foot, it will mean less ribbon changes per day and less shipping costs per order. It is a win win situation for everyone. To find out more about this ribbon or for a sample roll to test. Please contact us.

On-Line Bar Code Verification Revisited
Posted by admin on July 28th, 2008

In an earlier post we talked about an application in which our client needed to verify the print quality of bar codes as they were being printed. We recommended an after market bolt-on scanning device that could trigger a divert from the manufacturing line if a sub-standard bar code was detected.

Well, we have another client with a similar business problem – ensuring that the bar codes they print on their products are scannable by their end user customers. However, this application differs in that the labels are printed in a peel and present mode and then manually applied to the product. So, the after market Printronix device was not an appropriate solution.

We consulted with Bruce McDowell at Datamax who recommended the H class thermal transfer printer with an on-board linear scanning device option. This high performance 300 DPI printer employs a CCD scanner to monitor bar code scannability as it is being printed. The user can set a series of thresholds including bar code type, number of bar codes present or minimum number of good reads that must be met by the scanned bar code label. If the bar code does not pass, the user also has a number of remedies to choose including re-printing the label or simply stopping the printer.

While this solution does not provide true ANSI bar code verification it is about half the price of those devices and does provide simple bar code validation which is more than adequate in this and many other applications. We will piloting this device with our client in a few weeks – so, more on this solution later.

Visiting Western New York in July
Posted by admin on July 21st, 2008

Last week Dana and I took the opportunity to visit with a number of our vendor partners in the Buffalo NY area. Dana was there with his family visiting Niagara Falls and I drove from Boston to join him. We met with one of our distribution partners, Bluestar who has a regional office in West Seneca NY. The local manager there is our old friend Mike Moscato.

We also got the opportunity to meet with Kathi Phelps at IIMAK, the ribbon manufacturer, who graciously took us to lunch. PaladinID and IIMAK have a relationship that goes back to when Dana started the company. We got an opportunity to tour the plant and meet the sales and marketing staff at headquarters in Amherst NY.

We also met with Jeff Bertrand at JH Bertrand in Buffalo. JH Bertrand is a manufacturer of expansion labels – they are the labels that attach to products and fold out to accommodate a lot of information. We are excited about the prospects for this new product line as it should be a good fit for a number of our existing customers.

Then it was back to the Falls for Dana so he could continue his family vacation and 7 hours of windshield time for me back to Medfield on I-90.