Rob Slavin

The logistics industry favours thermal printing due to its ability to produce accurate images with excellent edge definition, making it ideal for printing barcodes. There are two thermal printing methods available; Thermal Transfer and Direct Thermal. In Thermal Transfer, a thermal print head applies heat to a print ribbon contain ink. That ink is melted onto the label to form the image. Direct Thermal requires a thermal sensitive label that the print head will heat directly to form the image.

Determining the X-Dimension and quiet zones The X-Dimension is the narrowest bar or whitespace in a barcode. You can use the following formula to determine the X-Dimension of a barcode. Variable Description Value a Constant 25.4 b The number of dots that make up a bar (integer) 1..n n The printer’s dots per inch (dpi) 203/300 When scanning a barcode using a barcode verifier, you can deduce the label printer’s dpi using the above formula.