Thermal Printer Ribbon Wrinkle

We receive and see posts about zebra printer ribbon wrinkling on zebra z 170xi series and z 220xi series printers.

Thermal printer ribbon wrinkle. Making that adjustment will even out the pressure all the way across the printhead and hopefully prevent ribbon wrinkle. Another item you can check is the spindle tension. Ink is scratching off the label as it is fed through the printer. What happens is every time you use the ribbon it is melting ink and transferring it to the label.

This effect commonly known as ribbon wrinkle results in streaks or voids on the printed image. If barcodes are printing the wrinkle in the thermal transfer ribbon can cause the barcode to be unreadable. This kind of uneven printing can cause stress on a ribbon and the ribbon will wrinkle. When the base film breaks away from the label the ink will cause stress on the base film.

Below are the most common causes of ribbon wrinkle on any thermal printer by wrinkle it is meant as voids appearing on the printed label. Itw thermal films presents tips on preventing ribbon wrinkle in your thermal transfer ribbon printer. This can be a serious issue for applications that use bar codes. Due to the very thin substrate ribbons are vulnerable to puckering and folding.

One of the challenges for thermal printer designers is managing the ribbon within the print system. While this problem is common on all thermal transfer printers it is most prevalent on the wider web printers since there is more surface area of ribbon moving across the printhead.