P4T thermal ribbon detection

B Bob Walker 2 years 11 months ago
2 1 0

We are using a P4T for both thermal printing and thermal transfer.
 
Is there a way to detect that a thermal ribbon is inserted in the printer?
 
We need to be able to insert or remove the ribbon depending on which type label we will be printing.
 
 
Thanks...

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1 Replies

V Vedsatx Saddvv

Hi Bob, With the P4T there are a few factors.  If you are printing in ZPL, you can detect if the ribbon is present as well as tell the printer if you expect a ribbon to be present on each label.  The actual command to get this "flag" is ~HS (ZPL II Manual page 168) and can be sent at any time to receive the status.  You can also set up an alert to tell you when the ribbon is out using the ^SX (p263) command.  You can set what you expect each label to use (ribbon or not) by adding a ^MT (p255) command to your label format.  If you are printing with CPCL, you can use the ESC(0x1b) ‘i’ (0x69) command (CPCL manual page 11-4) to get the ribbon status. There are no commands to set expectations for each label.

How you send these depends on the programming environment you use.  Can I ask if you are using Rho (which version), Android, PC (C#, Java, etc.), iOS, etc?  Are you using the Zebra Link-OS Multiplatform SDK?

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