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Success Stories from the Field
Thermal Ribbon Quality

The Problem

A large manufacturer of filter products answered a telemarketing call from a large business products company located here in the Buckeye state pitching a low priced thermal ribbon for their application. The company purchased the thermal ribbon and production began to use the ribbons a few weeks later in their Zebra printers. After a couple of days of continuous printing, the operator began to notice small black particles inside the printer. The operator had never seen these black particles before using the thermal ribbon. Upon further inspection, the operator also noticed his print quality was getting worse after each large label run. The operator cleaned the thermal printhead with isopropyl alcohol, but the printed image was poor in some areas of the label.

The Solution

Dynamic Bar Code Systems made a service visit to the customer’s site and removed the thermal printhead for inspection under a lighted magnifying glass. While inspecting the thermal printhead and thermal ribbon, we noticed the ink surface on the thermal ribbon was actually flaking into small black particles. The flakes from the thermal ribbon eventually built up on the surface of the thermal printhead and caused the elements on the thermal printhead to overheat and eventually fail. The poor quality thermal ribbon had actually damaged the customer’s thermal printhead. After installing a new thermal printhead, cleaning out the printer and switching to Sony’s TR4085plus thermal ribbon, the quality and performance of the customer’s printers returned to normal and have remained that way through numerous rolls of thermal ribbon.

The Benefit

Using poor quality ribbons will only cause you harm in the future. In this case, the customer would have saved close to $150 dollars annually with the new thermal ribbon. But by using poor quality thermal ribbons, the cost of correcting the damage was nearly $700. Now the customer has a well operating machine and there is NO ribbon flaking inside the printer. Bottom line: Regardless if you purchase ribbons from us or a competitor, make sure you are purchasing NAME BRAND ribbons such as Sony, Tharo, IIMAK, ITW, etc. You may save a little money now, but you will eventually pay dearly to fix the problem later.

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Telephone (330)220-5451 * Toll Free 800-950-3227 * Fax: (330)273-0697

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Success Stories from the Field Thermal Ribbon Quality

Success Stories from the Field
Thermal Ribbon Quality