Plastic Card Thermal PrintersSmart Cards - The UK's Premier Supplier of Plastic Card Thermal PrintersThermal plastic card printers are now available for such a price that every customer could own their own colour thermal plastic card printer in the office issuing their own cards at a low unit cost, which is ideal for low volume cards. There are several thermal printers available all of a good quality issuing all processing credit card quality type of plastic cards. Technology has developed very quickly with Japanese technology proving to be the leading player in the thermal printer market. The main component of the thermal printer is the thermal print head which has now been greatly reduced in price from its original starting position, this has of course helped greatly in the reduction of all of the main thermal printers who all use the same print head in their systems. Eltron, CIM and Javelin along with the new Evolis thermal printer have all utilised the same print head which is very durable with a 2 year guarantee. So how has this effected the UK plastic card thermal printer market? Well with the reduction of price and a influx of quality thermal printers from several manufacturers the customer has a larger range of thermal printers to choose from all of whom are trying to gain market share, this has involved a large reduction in price from all manufactures with the emphasis on making their margin on the consumables required to make the plastic card thermal printer work to its potential. Unlike paper or laser printers the plastic card thermal printer has to use specific consumables particularly the foils to maintain the print head, failure to do so renders the thermal print head guarantee invalid. With the added ability to add magnetic encoding and the option of smart card or mifair card encoding and initialisation to the very smallest of the plastic thermal printers at a low unit cost then do it yourself plastic cards are there for all. Also available is the 400 range of thermal printers that offer a flip over module allowing the plastic card to be printed on both sides in one pass using variable data if required, these thermal printers can process upto 300 cards per hour. If printing in mono the plastic card thermal printers vary in speed from 300 cards per hour to 600 cards per hour providing a 300 dpi image or print. Thermal printers for plastic cards drop into two specfic catergories. Firstly the small volume plastic card issuer who needs a thermal printer to issue a few cards on site, they being membership cards or photo id cards, to the plastic card bureaus whom issue millions of cards. The plastic card bureaus require a more subtantial thermal printer than the desk top thermal printers that are now so widely available to the market today. We have invested in the top end of the thermal printer market in the Image Master from NBS and the T1000 from CIM, these plastic card thermal printers are capable of producing 1000's of cards per hour and are specifically designed for plastic card bureaus for high volume work, unfortunatly this is reflected in their price being 3 and 4 times more expensive than the desk top thermal printers. Also the Datacard G800 is a very good thermal printer suitable for the bureau operation. The company is a reseller of several of the plastic card thermal printers, we presently work with the Javelin thermal printer and the CIM range of both thermal printers and embossing machines and have recently worked with Matica in Italy in reselling in the UK the Chica / Evolis plastic card printer. We have evaluated all of these printers and find them to be all on a par so much has the market for thermal printerts evolved in the last few years. Smart Cards are looking at networking a large amount of small thermal printers to see if they could work in a bureau environment such is the cost of these thermal printers against the larger printers, it may be a way forward if they can stand the workload. Thermal printers are now well esablished in the UK and Smart Cards is amongst the resellers whom can offer a range of plastic card thermal printers for any application required. So if you need a thermal printer for low volume or high volume runs for card personalisation please contact Smart Cards for any thermal printer on the market today. Smart Cards remains at the leading edge of plastic card technology.
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