While working with a prospect, I had positive surprise;
Epson released a new driver for the C3500.
You may remember my first driver surprise this
year that enabled 8.25” wide printing: http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2014/11/gp-c831-surprise.html
After the initial introduction, I learned my prospect wanted
to print small labels with color codes. The
color helps the organization and their customers distinguished similar
products in inventory. In our discussion, I told him that the TM-C3500 is limited
to 0.6” label height. Given this
limitation, he created BarTender files and sent them to me to print. I printed and scanned the 3” x 0.6” barcode
labels with no problem.
The prospect then wanted to see a demo of the printer
printing these small labels. While conducting the printer demo, I learned he
was currently using the Primera LX900 printers to produce the labels. However, many of the labels were not able to
be scanned. It seems the labels moved
during printing; thus producing poor barcodes.
In addition, he was not able to add the printer to the network; forcing
them to use USB connectivity and making the IT group very unhappy. More important, he shared that their ink
costs were very high to produce these little barcode labels.
The prospect also shared that the label real estate was
critical; they could not use a label taller than 0.375”. Based on this requirement, I suggested we
could print 2 of these labels in a 2.75” x 0.75” area. It seemed, however, the prospect company’s
current process required printing one label at a time. To learn more about printing narrow labels,
check out my earlier post: http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2014/10/printing-narrow-color-labels.html
Once I understood what he really needed, I recommended going
back and looking at label design options to produce these small labels. Back at
the office, I emailed Epson to say that we may not be able to help this
customer given the requirements. Within minutes, I received the reply from Ken at Epson:
“We just released a new
version of the 3500 driver / FW that accommodates heights down to 0.31.
“
After getting samples of the prospect’s 2.75” x 0.375”
labels, installing the new driver and thanking Ken, I set up the media height as 0.375”:
and
received a message which I should have expected:
As I had the previous WAD20200 version of the firmware loaded in my
printer, I went ahead and printed using BarTender. The labels printed great and the barcodes
scanned easily using my phone. However,
each print job skipped 3 labels:
Given this issue, I adjusted the gap sensor to insure the
printer was reading the gap correctly.
And I adjusted the print start position (which need to be
adjusted slightly anyway).
But each print job still skipped 3 labels. When I contacted Epson to ask why, their
first question was, “did you update the firmware of the printer?” As I hadn't, I immediately updated the
firmware; and the 0.375” labels printed perfectly.
Given these results, this prospect is now a new customer of
Color Label Solutions.
When printing small/short labels, please know barcodes can
be an issue. For example, this ~.25”/X
dimension of 15 mils Data Matrix barcode scanned just fine using my phone when
printed:
But this ~.125”/X dimension of 12.5 mils Data Matrix barcode
did not scan using my phone:
If you want to print short or small labels, contact us. We’ll help you get started printing these
seemingly difficult labels quickly and easily.
If you have a C3500 printer and want the latest driver/firmware, contact
us as well. We’ll get these updates to
you.
We want to help you become one of our important customers as
well.
Guy Mikel
855-962-7670
#colorlabels