ID Card Printer

Membership Cards

harnijabar — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 09:35:52 +0000

Having a membership card for your customers or members enhance the image of your organization. For merbership of certain clubs, it promotes certain status and group of society. For loyalty card, it would promote more loyalty and frequent purchase. We provide the printing service or you could purchase one of the plastic card printer to DIY. It is easy and simply to print those plastic card, and customers/members could get the card immediately when they apply, therefore reducing the need for temporary card.

We are a one stop center for Membership Card printing, whereby we carry the plastic card printer, bonus terminal, design software, and also supplies for the plastic card. No matter if your are printing for your Golf Club, Polo Club, Car Society, Supermarket, Retail Stores or any membership program, we will have the solution for you.

Card Printer

harnijabar — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 02:12:05 +0000

CardsOnline are doing research on our printer and found out that Card Printer actually means plastic-card printers which are the electronic desktop printers. It is actually pointing to our products. We would have thought that Card Printer is a wider term that could be used for Business Card Printer, or Greeting Cards Printer.

We are in this industry for 17 and we carry many products and services for card printer.

We distributes 4 major card printer brand: Zebra, Nisca, Matica and Pointman
Supplies plastic card and ribbons almost all brands
Cuztomizable lanyards or Badge holder
Card Printer rental services
Bonus Card Terminal – to track rewards point
Techical support and Repair
Technical Support, Repairs & Maintenance Contracts For Card Printers
Card Personalization Software

CardsOnline is also currently having its office in Singapore and Malaysia.

ID Card Printer – More Usage

harnijabar — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 08:23:25 +0000

Having your very own ID Card printer have many usage allowing flexibility and creativity. ID Card Printer are usually used for Employee Card as it is durable and allow four colours printing on RFID, Smart Card and plain Plastic Card. With the personalize lanyard, it allows your company to look more professional.

However, there are also other usage for these ID Card Printer

1. Plastic Business Card – on the 10 mil plastic card, it is unique and look absolutely professional presenting a plastic business card to your potential customers and partners.

2. Visitor Card – Big companies have standards, especially for visitor risking quality and trade secret to leak. Plastic Visitor Card are more durable and also allow your visitor to have a small token of remembrance on your company. Also with the right tracking software, you know that your visitor is not allow to roam around your facility freely.

3. Membership Card – Imagine you can offer your very own membership card for B2C or even B2B consumer immediately when customer subscribe to your membership.

4. Loyalty Card – On top of the membership card, with the right system, you could improve customer loyalty.

5. Exhibition tag – Providing the tag when visitor registered themselves for the exhibition is always immediate. Therefore, having a plastic card printer you could personalize and also track visitor. With the help of barcode reader on each booth, you could potentially track visitor and allow business contacts to be scan digitally.

This five example does not limit us from thinking further about the use of a ID Card Printer as today, these machines are a small cost compare to the gain that we could achieve.

Glossary – Cards

harnijabar — Mon, 16 May 2011 10:39:10 +0000

Access Control Cards
Plastic cards used to gain access to premises, usually associated with magnetic stripe and proximity cards.

Bar Code
An array of machine-readable rectangular bars and spaces arranged in a specific way defined in international standards to represent letters, numbers, and other human-readable symbols.

Digital Imaging
Scanning or otherwise capturing images which may be subsequently edited, filed, displayed or printed on a plastic card.

Dye Sublimation
An imaging method for transferring controlled quantities of printer ribbon dye onto a plastic card. Because of the print head resolution (300 dpi), photographic quality results.

Encoding
The process of electronically “writing” information on magnetic stripes or smart card chips.

Font
A character set (alphabet and numerals) of a specified design and size.

Hologram
A unique photographic printing that provides a three-dimensional effect on a flat surface. Holograms cannot be easily copied and are used for security and aesthetic purposes on cards.

Image Capture System
A hardware and software system used to obtain and save personal data and cardholder photographic images.

Lamination
The process of combining lamination material and core material using time, heat and pressure. Laminate patches used in card printers come on rolls, with and without carriers/liners.

Machine-Readable
A code or characters that can be read by machines.

Magnetic Stripe
Magnetic material, applied as a strip in the surface of a card, used to encode cardholder information.

Memory Card
A type of smart card. Also known as a synchronous card, it features memory and is suitable for use as a token card or identification card.

Microprocessor Card
A type of smart card, also known as an asynchronous card. Features memory, a microprocessor and is suitable for portable or confidential files, identification, tokens, electronic purse or any combination of uses.

Overlay Varnish
A thin transparent layer applied (using the print head) to cards to resist scratching and fading from exposure to UV radiation.

Resolution
Dimension of the smallest element of an image that can be printed. Usually stated as dots-per-inch (dpi).

Prox Card
Short for Proximity card; a form of contactless smart card used for access control applications. Embedded in the card is a metallic antenna coil, which allows it to communicate with an external antenna. Because the cards require only close “proximity” to a RF antenna to be read, they are also referred to as contactless cards.

PVC
Polyvinyl Chloride. The primary material used for typical plastic cards.

Smart Card/Contact Smart Card
Also called a “chip” card or IC card. A plastic card with an embedded microchip, which may be used to store information about the cardholder or record card transactions as they occur.

Thermal Printing
The process of creating an image on a plastic card using a heated print head.

Thermal Print Head
An electronic device which uses heat to transfer a digitized image from a special ribbon to the flat surface of a plastic card.

YMC
Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan are the primary print colors for cards. The three colors are combined in varying degrees to make a full spectrum of colors. YMCKO is the same as YMC plus Black (K) and clear protective overcoat (O).

Source: Zebra Card Printer

Quick Facts About Card Printer – Part 2

harnijabar — Tue, 03 May 2011 11:02:01 +0000

Magnetic stripe cards have been in existence since the early 70’s when they were used on paper and film-based ID cards as well as credit cards. Magnetic stripe technology is widely used throughout the world and remains the dominant technology in the United States for transaction processing and access control.
Other technologies such as PDF bar codes and smart chip cards are now capturing part of the magnetic stripe market since they can hold more information.
There are a wide variety of contact and contactless smart cards currently in use. The terms “Smart Chip Card, IC Card, and Smart Card” all refer to the same type of card. Smart cards feature an embedded, programmable chip and can store over 100 times more information than a magnetic stripe. They can also be reprogrammed to add, delete or rearrange data. The second type of smart card contains both a microprocessor as well as memory. Not only can cards can store massive amounts of information, but the micro-processor enables the card to make independent decisions regarding the information stored.
Contactless smart cards utilize various RFID technologies to write and read. Many card printers print on these kinds of smart cards. Encoding or programming the electronic devices on these cards is typically accomplished by an external encoding or programming device, but contactless smart card encoders integrated into the card printer are increasingly available.
Radio Frequency Identification Technology is a method of identifying objects using radio waves. RFID works by employing an RFID transponder (or tag) and a reader. The RFID transponder is comprised of a microchip that holds information to identify an object, product, or person and an antenna for transmitting this data to the reader. The antenna transmits the data to a reader that converts the radio waves to usable information.
Unlike bar code and magnetic stripe technology, RFID transponders can be read anywhere within the magnetic field sent out by the reader. Radio waves can travel and be read through many non-metallic objects. Because RFID antennas can be embedded into many objects, including plastic cards, and still be detected, data is protected from the wear and tear of everyday use and environmental elements. Depending on the power of the reader, an RFID antenna can be read from direct contact up to 20 feet.

Magnetic stripe encoding terms:

- Coercivity: A technical term used to designate how strong a magnetic field must be to affect data encoded on a magnetic stripe. Coercivity is measured in Oersteds (Oe).

Coercivity is the measure of how difficult it is to encode information in a magnetic stripe.

- HiCo: Abbreviation for High Coercivity. HiCo magnetic stripes provide the highest level of immunity to damage by stray magnetic fields. They are more difficult to encode than LoCo magnetic stripes because the encoding requires more power. HiCo magnetic stripe cards are slightly more expensive for this reason.

- LoCo: Abbreviation for Low Coercivity. Easier to encode and slightly less expensive than HiCo magnetic stripe cards.

Source: Zebra Card Printer

Quick Facts About Card Printer – Part 1

harnijabar — Sat, 30 Apr 2011 16:16:59 +0000

Printing ID cards with your own card printer is a simple task. It just simply connects your printer to your computer and it will print out the same way like your paper printing machine. Plastic card printer prints your image on plastic instead of printing it on a piece of paper.
Most card printers can handle plastic cards, equivalent to credit cards or driving licenses. These are standard CR-80 cards, measuring about 3.375 x 2.125 inches (85.5mm x 54 mm).
The common thickness of a plastic card used are 10mil (0.25mm) or 30mil (0.76mm).
Most of our card printers uses dye sublimation technology which requires a monochrome or colour ribbon.
How do the card printers work? They work by placing the plastic card through a thermal print head together with the color ribbon. Then the color of the ribbon is passed onto the card through the heat given out by the print head.
Other than printing, a card printer can also be used to encode magnetic stripes or contact/contactless smart cards for enhanced security.
Not all card printers are able to print your card’s design in a full card (edge-to-edge) format. Thus, most of our customers opt for their cards to be pre-printed using offset printing and will then use a card printer to personalise the cards.
Most card printers are connected to the PC via a USB interface. To print out your cards, you will usually need a card design software that can be purchased with your card printer, such as TrekNet® PESONA.

Before you purchase, the type of printer you choose will depend on:

The type of card you plan to use
How many cards you plan to print
How often you need to print cards
What printing elements you need to incorporate into your card

The 5 major factors to consider when purchasing a card printer are:

The type of card you plan to use
Card size
Printing speeds
The physical properties of the printer
Ease of use
The type of printing you want

Source: Zebra Card Printer