Monday, January 7, 2019

Useful And Essential Facts About Thermal Transfer Ribbon

By Rebecca Cooper


There are several criteria used to classify printers. Among them are printers that are impact or non-impact. Under non-impact printers are thermal transfer printers, which utilize heat to put down impressions on paper rather than using impact. There are some special papers known as thermal transfer ribbons in which the printing occurs. Resin-based wax or ink is used to make these ribbons. This is worth knowing about Thermal Transfer Ribbon.

Resistive heating pins are incorporated as part of the header of the printer. Several pins can be contained in a single print-head to perform the role of printing. When the paper and the pins come in contact, they melt wax or resin on the paper. The melting of the wax/resin is what causes the creation of images that are seen eventually.

The heating of the pins is controlled by a microprocessor. Different images are produced depending on the pin that is heated. The print-head is usually wide enough to cover the entire medium or paper that needs to be printed. These printers are popular used in the printing of various products, including piece tags, labels, and bar codes. The printers can be classified into two major types, that is, direct thermal and thermal wax transfer printers.

Direct thermal printers function in such a way that images are formed by burning dots on coated paper when the print-head goes over the paper. Nevertheless, these printer types cannot function for printing on thermal transfer vinyl as their design does not allow this. This technology found its use on paper printing in the earliest fax machine forms.

Thermal wax transfer printers are designed in that they contain ribbons. They print by applying heat onto the ribbon first. The ribbon usually contains wax-based ink and when heated, the ink melts. The ink on the ribbon is then transferred onto the paper on which printing needs to be done. The ink then cools and forms permanent impressions. The quality of the print usually depends on the quality of the printer and the ribbon it contains.

Thermal transfer vinyl can be placed into three main groups. The three types are full resin, wax-resin, and full wax ribbons. A wax-based ink coating is used to make full wax ribbons. Therefore, they can be easily melted using low temperatures. These are the most available ribbons, which also makes them the cheapest. The durability of the images produced on these materials is very low.

As suggested by the name, wax-resin ribbons are a hybrid of full wax and full resin ribbons. The melting temperature of these ribbons is higher than that of full wax resins. They are ideal for weatherproofing applications. Because of the material they are made from, the image printed on them is usually more durable and can withstand occasional heavy handling.

Full resin ribbons melt at the highest temperature because they are made using pure resin. The melted resin then dissolves into the paper that is being printed on. This permits the images formed to be very durable. In comparison to the other two types of ribbons, full resin ribbons cost a lot more.




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