Zebra Technologies P640I - Manual (Page 12)

2 P640i Card Printer User Guide 980541-001 Rev. A
Introduction
Overview
Overview
The P640i Printer is a complete, fully automatic photo ID card fabricator. It comprises six
functional elements:
• Card hopper
• Magnetic (“mag”) encoder - optional feature
• Cleaning station
• Print station
• Flip station
• Laminator
Because the P640i Printer is fully automatic, it requires no attention from the operator other
than media loading and an occasional vacuuming.
Although you don’t need a detailed knowledge of the printer to use the printer effectively, an
overall understanding of what goes on can help you troubleshoot effectively.
How you load the cards, color ribbon and laminate is important - see Section 2. Careful
attention to media handling takes care of most problems!
Photo ID card printing
The process used in the P640i Printer is known as digital thermal
transfer, a means of printing clean, durable images directly onto the
PVC surface of photo ID cards.
There are two different thermal transfer technologies, both used in the
P640i Printer: dye sublimation (“dye sub”), which uses the three
process colors Yellow/Magenta/Cyan for photos and graphics, and
mass transfer for machine-readable black text and bar codes.
Both types of printing are done with a single print head comprising a
row of tiny heating elements, 300 to the inch, each driven
independently by the printer controller. Sandwiched by spring pressure
between the print head and the card being printed is the color ribbon, usually a series of
process-color dye panels (Y, M and C) for dye sub, plus a panel of black resin (K) for mass
transfer.