Card Printer
Card printers, often also called plastic-card printers, are electronic desktop printers with single card feeders which print and personalize plastic cards. In this respect they differ from, for example, label printers which have a continuous supply feed. Card dimensions are usually 85.60 × 53.98 mm, standardized under ISO 7816 as ID-1. This format is also used in EC-cards, telephone cards, EU drivers’ licenses and health insurance cards. This is commonly known as the bank card format. Card printers are controlled by corresponding printer drivers or by means of a specific programming language.
The principle is the same for practically all card printers: the plastic card is passed through a thermal print head at the same time as a color ribbon. The color from the ribbon is transferred onto the card through the heat given out from the print head. The standard performance for card printing is 300 dpi (300 dots per inch, equivalent to 11.8 dots per mm). There are different printing processes, which vary in their detail.
Alongside the basic function of printing cards, card printers can also read and encode magnetic strips as well as contact and contact free RFID chip cards. Thus card printers enable the encoding of plastic cards both visually and logically.
There is a difference between single and double sided card printers with an automatic flipping station. Plastic cards can also be laminated after printing. Plastic cards are laminated after printing to achieve a considerable increase in durability and a greater degree of counterfeit prevention.
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