Thermocode 2 Printer manual Version 2.04 January 2011 38
38
Ribbon Tracking
Q. Printer fixed rods, lower roller or printhead assembly are dirty, through build up of wax/resin
residue?
A. Clean fixed rods, lower roller and printhead as described in maintenance section.
Q. Ribbon may be sticking to substrate being printed, and being pulled to one side?
A. Adjust the printhead position from the substrate, possibly the clearance is insufficient and the foil is
being indexed along with the substrate. Service Engineer may be required.
Q. Printer may have been dropped, damaging the lower roller or damaged tension arm?
A. Call for Service Engineer or send back to manufacturer for checking.
Print Quality Problems
Q. Print not consistent over printed area?
A.
Ribbon not compatible with substrate.
Temperature burn, settings too low. Low printing temperatures can give the effect of the edges of
characters appearing faint or ragged.
Damaged or dirty print base or lower print roller, clean and check for any imperfections. Normal
Thermocode Series 2 print bases are 45-50 shore hardness rubber, which is bonded to an
aluminium backing sheet and then ground. Flatness of this pad or roller is very important, on some
labelling machines if the backing web is not aligned correctly it will cut into the print base or actually
miss-shape it due to the tension of the backing web.
Printer not correctly mounted in frame.
Printer frame not manufactured to correct dimensions, clearance under printer excessive. See
Standard Frame measurements drawings at the end of this manual.
Printhead dirty or pixels burnt out. Clean the printhead and test print on plain fax paper to confirm the
condition of the printhead.
Ribbon indexing not enough. See previous page.
Ribbon tracking on printer, causing creasing. See previous page.
Ribbon perforated or broken, see previous page.
Ribbon ink coating inconsistent.
Clearing Printer Errors
All errors that occur within the printer are shown as “Error” on the status line of the Mini-Terminal display.
To view the actual error press No.1 or the Enter key of the keypad. Errors are shown as text messages along
with a numerical number which must be noted if you are requesting a Service visit or assistance.
Once errors have been viewed they can then be cleared, page up to the top of the screen and press “Enter”
when the cursor is next to the option “Clear errors”.
Clearing errors can have two consequences, if the errors are mechanical the error is cleared and the format
is retained in the image memory. If the error is a format design problem, as the error is cleared the format will
be removed from the image memory.
The only way to correct format errors is to redesign the format this cannot be corrected by adjusting
parameters within the Mini-Terminal parameters.
To Next Page