Making cards, Making cards -8, Use a card creation application – Datacard Group SP Series User Manual

Page 40: Print from a pc application

3-8

Using the printer

User’s Guide for Express™ and Select™ Class Printers

The Quit Diagnostics button on the Status tab changes the Express or Select printer
driver from diagnostics mode to printing mode. When you select this button, a
message appears informing you that the printer will reset; you can resume printing
cards. The internal components will move into the position for printing cards.

If you have entered diagnostics mode and selected the Close button in the Status
dialog box, a message appears that allows you to quit diagnostics before closing
the Status dialog box.

Making cards

This section describes several ways to make cards using the Express or Select
printer.

•

Usually, cards are sent from a card creation application, which captures,
organizes, and formats the information on the card. A card creation application is
specially designed software that handles the types of information used on cards.
See

“Use a card creation application”

for the steps to follow.

•

If you do not have a card creation application, you can use another PC application
to format the information to print on cards. If you are encoding magnetic stripe
data, be sure to use an application in which you can save the result and edit it
again, such as Windows WordPad™. See

“Print from a PC application”

for the

steps to follow.

With any application, test your card design to verify the results.

Use a card creation application

Follow the instructions for the card creation application to capture, format, and
save the data for the card.

In the card creation application, send cards to the printer.

The printer driver receives data for each card, prepares the card for printing, and
sends each card to the printer in the order received. The printer driver keeps
cards in a queue if the printer is busy.

♦

Print from a PC application

Select the printer settings that correspond to the cards to print. See “Working with
printer settings and data” on page 3-1 for more information. Settings might include
the following:

–

Enable two-sided printing if you plan to print the front and back of the
card.The printer must have a duplex module to print on both sides of the card.

–

Set the margins for the area to print on the card. A setting of Edge-to-Edge is
the same as a margin of 0.