Saturday, January 5, 2019

Useful And Essential Facts About Thermal Transfer Ribbon

By Rebecca Cooper


Printers can be classified based on several criteria. In one classification, there are impact and non-impact printers. Thermal transfer printers are classified under non-impact printers because instead of using impact, they use heat to register impressions on paper. The printing is done on special papers referred to as thermal transfer ribbons. These ribbons are made of resin-based inks or wax. Here are facts regarding 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.

A microprocessor controls the heating of the pins. The images produced differ based on the pins that are heated. There is usually a wide space on the print-head so that it can cover the entire medium on which printing needs to be done. The popularity of these printers is in printing a variety of products like labels, name tags and bar codes. There are two classifications of these printers, which are thermal wax transfer and direct thermal 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 depicted in its name, wax-resins are made of both the full wax and the full resin ribbons. They have a higher melting point than the full wax ribbons. Typically, the wax resins are applicable in weatherproofing. There is increased durability of the image that is printed on them because of the type of material they are made of. They also allow for heavy handling occasionally.

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.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment