Hello All:
This discussion is meant to provide you with preventive maintenance tips to help ensure that your desktop ID or card printer continues to provide you with hiqh quality printing and doesn't break down due to preventable mechanical problems.
First lets talk about supplies:
Your printer ribbons and your cards should be stored in a cool, dry environment until you need them. Try to keep dust and other debris from coming in contact with your supplies by leaving unused supplies in their boxes until you need to replenish the supplies in the printer.
Cards that are left open to the elements (even in an office setting) can accumulate dust and can even fade over time if they are continually subjected to direct UV light. Ribbon that has been removed from it's protective packaging and left in the open for an extended period of time can become dry and brittle, causing problems with color transfer from the ribbon to the card and frequent ribbon breaks.
When adding new cards to your printer input hopper, handle them as if you were handling a photograph that you don't want to get finger prints on. Oils and miniscule dirt particles from your fingerprints can severley affect the quality of your printed cards and on occasion can also cause card jams in your printer. If you are unlucky enough to drop a stack of cards on the floor, my suggestion is to throw them away. Plastic cards accumulate a static charge that will attract every piece of dirt and fuzz within a centimeter. It is almost impossible to clean all of the debris off of one card that has been dropped, let alone an entire stack of 20-50 cards. Running extremely dirty cards through your printer can wreak havoc on the printer's internal mechanisms and in some cases could void your warranty. Even the card cleaning roller that comes with most printers theses days can't remove all the debris if the card is very dirty. It's better to throw away the dirty cards (a 500 count box of regular, blank, white cards only costs arund $35), than take the chance of breaking your printer, thereby requiring an "on-site" service call or a shipment back to the manufacturer for repair. Of course, if you are under a service contract with your local provider, there would be no extra charge for a service call, but why create hassle and downtime for yourself when it could be prevented.
Now lets talk abut preventive maintenance:
Depending on the brand of printer you have, you have probably either purchased a set of cleaning supplies seperately, or the cleaning supplies are included with each new ribbon that you receive.
Regardless, you probably have one or more of the following - a print head cleaning pen (looks kind of like a magic marker), a cleaning card, and a new cleaning roller. I'm not sure if every brand of printer uses a cleaning roller or not, but for the sake of this post, let's assume that they do.
A good rule of thumb is that you should run a cleaning card through your printer every time you put in a new ribbon. Follow your manufacturer's instructions for using the cleaning card. The cleaning card should remove any residue or debris that may have accumulated as a normal result of the printing process.
If you are having a problem with your printer taking up cards from your input hopper or with cards jamming, you may have some dirt or residue on the rollers. Sometimes, running a cleaning card through the printer will solve this problem. If you continue to have problems with card take-up or card jamming, it might be time to call your local provider and ask them to come thoroughly clean the internal mechanisims of your printer, and check it for any mechanical problems. Usually, proper cleaning of the printer rollers through the use of the appropriate cleaning card will help prevent these types of issues. Of course, if your printer is 10 years old, there may be no amount of cleaning that will help you. You will probably need to consider either replacing some of the rollers, or purchasing a new printer.
The cleaning roller that comes with many printers should also be changed every time you replace the ribbon. The tacky surface of the cleaning roller wears off or accumulates so much debris (hair, fuzz, dust) over time that it becomes ineffective for cleaning the cards prior to the print process. If you start seeing voids (unprinted areas) in the middle of a card you just printed, chances are that it was either a bad card (which seldom happens) or your cleaning roller missed some debris on the card. Card debris prevents the print ribbon from coming into contact with the card, hence the void that is sometimes left behind. As I stated previously, card debris can also gunk up the rollers and gears in your printer causing major problems for you down the road, so change your cleaning roller frequently if your printer has one.
A print head cleaning pen comes with almost every new printer or can be purchased separately. Follow your manufacturer's instructions on how to use the pen on your specific brand of printer. In most cases, you will need to open your printer, locate the print head, and run the alchohol based tip of the cleaning pen along the edge of the print head to remove any residue that may have accumulated. As with the previous steps, try to do this every time you replace the ribbon.
Finally, after replacing the cleaning roller, running a cleaning card through the printer, and cleaning the print head, let your printer stand open for a few minutes to allow all the cleaning solvents to evaporate prior to printing your next card.
This may sound like a lot of work, but it really only takes 5-10 minutes each time you replace a ribbon to keep your printer in good working order.
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