Card printers for ID, visitor and access cards

Direct-to-card or retransfer?

With direct-to-card printing, the printhead transfers the colour by dye sublimation directly onto the card surface. The method is fast, economical in consumables and well suited to smooth PVC cards. With retransfer printing, the printer first prints the image onto a transfer film and then fuses it onto the card with heat. This produces an image over the card edge, covers unevenness above chips or antennas and gives a more durable surface. Retransfer is slower and more expensive in consumables. Our Zebra and Entrust series use direct-to-card printing; we will advise you on retransfer printers.

Single or dual-sided printing?

Many badges only need a printed front with photo, name and logo. You can use the back for instructions, an emergency number, a barcode or a signature field. Dual-sided printers turn the card with a flipper and print both sides in one pass, using ribbons with a second black panel such as YMCKOK or YMCKT-K. Turning cards by hand is possible for small quantities but takes time and leads to misprints more easily. According to the manufacturer, the card flipper can be retrofitted on the Zebra ZC300.

Magnetic stripe, contact chip or contactless?

The encoding you need is determined by your access control, time recording or payment system. Magnetic stripes to ISO 7811 come as HiCo with high coercivity, which is less sensitive to magnetic fields and suits frequently used cards, and as LoCo, which is easier to encode but more sensitive. Contact chips to ISO 7816 are used, for example, for PC login or signatures. Contactless cards to ISO 14443, such as MIFARE or iCLASS, are common in access control, while UHF cards to EPC Gen 2 allow longer read distances. You can find more on radio technology under RFID.

CR80 card format and card thickness in mil

Badges almost always use the CR80 format to ISO/IEC 7810 ID-1, measuring 85.6 × 53.98 mm, the size of a bank card. Thickness is given in mil; one mil is a thousandth of an inch or 0.0254 mm. 30 mil (0.76 mm) is usual for badges, while thin 10 mil cards are suitable, for example, as adhesive cards. In the shop we stock white Zebra PVC cards in 10 mil and 30 mil, the 30 mil cards also with HiCo or LoCo magnetic stripe, and 10 mil PVC adhesive cards, each in packs of 500 cards. Check before buying which card thicknesses your printer handles.

Ribbons: what does YMCKO mean?

The letters stand for the panels on the ribbon: Y, M and C (yellow, magenta, cyan) create the colour image by dye sublimation, K is black resin for sharp text and barcodes, and O is a transparent protective overlay (T for topcoat at Entrust). YMCKOK has a second black panel for the back. Ribbons with half-size colour panels (½ YMCKO) print colour on part of the card only and last for more cards. Monochrome ribbons print a single colour and produce considerably more cards per roll. The term images refers to printed card sides. According to the manufacturer, Zebra ZC series printers only work with genuine ribbons.

Security and data protection in badge printing

Badges open doors, so printers, blank cards and data must be protected. Current printers encrypt print data, authenticate printer and computer mutually and have a lock for the card hopper. Photos and names are personal data: restrict access to badge software and print jobs to authorised persons. Used ribbons with colour panels contain a negative of every printed card, so dispose of them like confidential documents. You can read how to secure printers on the network under Cybersecurity.