Plastic Card Printing

Plastic Card Printing

Advantages to using Plastic ID Card Printers include:

Image Quality
The image quality of plastic ID cards produced with digital printing technology is far superior to those produced through traditional manual methods. The cards look better because digitized photo images are sharper and can be edited for color quality. Placement of various graphical elements of the card is more consistent and text is clearer and more readable.

Flexibility
Plastic card printers can print text, line art, and photographic images. They can also encode magnetic stripes and provide smart card chip programming contact stations - all in a single step process. Card design software used to produce what appears on plastic cards provides users flexibility to change designs, store and access multiple designs, create variable text fields, and implement data base programs to store images and track information.

Security
Plastic card printers can apply many different materials and designs to make cards resistant to tampering and alteration. Any overlaminate makes a security card harder to tamper with by inserting a physical barrier between the counterfeiter and the card surface. Overlays containing holograms make cards more secure because the holograms cannot be easily reproduced or counterfeited. Other types of overlaminate contain micro-text - which, again, is extremely difficult to copy.

Durability
Plastic cards are inherently more durable than paper cards. Overlaminates improve the durability of plastic cards by making the cards resistant to abrasion, UV light exposure, and exposure to liquid chemicals. A greater thickness of overlaminate corresponds directly with a greater amount of protection to the card's surface.

Economy
In-house printing of plastic ID cards using a card printer eliminates the cost of compensating skilled workers who must produce cards using the time consuming, old-fashioned photographic cut/paste/laminate method. A plastic card printer is also more economical than jobbing out your card requirements to a lithographic printer or service bureau. Outside suppliers need to mark up card production costs significantly in order to cover their overhead and servicing costs. System costs such as these make outside providers a viable alternative only for very large volume applications.

Convenience
Printing your own plastic ID cards gives you the convenience of being able to produce cards when you need them, where you need them. It lets you issue new cards on demand. Having your own ID card printer capability also makes it easy to quickly make changes to card content or design.