In order to continue high quality printing for your plastic cards, and to protect your plastic card printer investment, CardsPlus reminds you to:
With these simple words you can protect the investment you made in your card machine and extend its lifespan.
Basic cleaning of desktop direct to card printers is a simple straightforward process. You can keep your printer healthy with just 6 steps!
6 ways to keep your plastic card printer in tip-top shape
1. Run the Cleaning Cycle
Each printer is offered with a cleaning cycle to keep your equipment functioning properly. Begin by removing the ribbon, the old cleaning roller and select the cleaning cycle in your printer drivers. The instructions will ask you to run a saturated cleaning card through the printer and the rest the printer will do automatically.
It is important to run this short cleaning cycle every time you change a ribbon or every 500 prints.
2. Replace Cleaning Rollers
The key to keeping your printer clean is to replace the cleaning roller every time you change your print ribbon.
The cleaning roller is sticky, and will pick up dust or foreign particles from the card before the card touches the print head. If dirt or dust comes in contact with your print head, you risk costly print head replacement. It is important to keep the roller sticky by replacing it often so that it can function the way it was designed to.
EDIsecure and Datacard branded direct-to-card ribbons each come with a cleaning roller and saturated cleaning card. For other brands, you will need to purchase these rollers separately.
3. Regular Services
We recommend you send your card printer in for a service every year or 5000 cards (which ever comes first). Services will clean all the sensors and delicate internal pieces of your printer.
Take care to use a reputable company, should you choose to not use CardsPlus, as technicians need to be trained and certified in order to handle the sensitive equipment correctly.
4. Keep the printer in a clean environment
For best results, we recommend keeping the printer in a climate controlled dust free area. Avoid eating while operating the machine, and use clean or gloved hands when operating the printer. These simple principles will help you extend the lifespan of your printer significantly.
5. Use Quality Consumables
The quality of the card stock you use is important. Poor quality stock had burrs, scratches and sometimes even dirt on the cards which will damage the internal parts of your card printer. Most printer brands will only fill a warranty if high quality certified card stock is used for printing. You can tell the quality of your stock with simple tests.
CardsPlus has certification for most printer brands on the quality of our card stock both custom printed and black stock.
6. Take care around the print head
We recommend you know where your print head is, and avoid touching or knocking against it.
Take special care when changing ribbons or when the cover is open and the print head exposed.
To the right is a picture of where the DCP240+ print head is located. This is the standard location for the print head.
With just a few basic cleaning and mantanience steps, you can extend the life of your plastic card printer and return on investment!
If you require a service in Southern Africa, contact us for a quote!
