Plastic ID Card Printers

Plastic ID Card Printer

Traditional office or home printers are mostly used to print documents onto paper. These printers with which we are all so familiar can also produce labels, business cards, even glossy digital photo reproductions. Some more advanced printers of this kind are designed to print directly onto the fronts of compact discs or DVDs.

Plastic ID card printers are specially designed to be able to print photo-quality images, bar codes and other information onto sturdy plastic cards.

Doing this regularly - printing thousands upon thousands of plastic ID cards -can wear down a machine. ID card printers have to deal with plastic cards that are slightly uneven or rough at the edges. Some cards are encrypted with chips, which can give them lumps undetectable to us but difficult to accomodate within a machine having such fine tolerances. Plastic ID badge and card printers are also often built to perform functions other than pure printing. For example, they may print both sides of a card at once, or coat a card with a special holographic overlaminate. The complexity inherent in housing so many different and complicated functions within a single machine makes it of paramount importance to choose an ID card printer from a company known for creating the very best ID card printers.

Reliability is perhaps the single most important quality to look for in a plastic ID card printer.

The Best ID Card Printers

The need for reliability prompts many buyers to turn to the same two companies again and again: Zebra and Fargo Electronics. Zebra used to be known as Eltron, and it is the largest producer of plastic card printers in the world. Fargo is also a card printer giant, with more than 80,000 printers bearing its brand in use all over the world.

These printers are exceptionally reliable. If affordability is an additional concern, look to Fargo's or Zebra's lines of economy printers. If security is your top priority, you can choose from amongst literally dozens of printer models that make security their top concern as well. Contact a reliable representative who can listen to what you need; that person will be able to narrow down the list of what is available to a smaller set of printers that address your concerns and meet your budget.