Plastic cards have become part of everyone's life, from credit cards to driver's licenses, membership cards to employee identification badges. Their standard size, portability and durability have made them the vehicle of choice for many applications.

Digital plastic card printers offer the ability to create custom cards ideally tailored to the application or to customize and personalize cards on demand, right at the point of issuance. Closely integrated with image capture systems (digital cameras, etc.) and computer database systems, the digital card printer provides the delivery point of a highly integrated system. The printing process is fast (just a few seconds per card) so that cards are generated and personalized while the customer cardholder waits, quickly connecting the customer or cardholder to the issuing organization or program.    

Digitally printed plastic cards provide numerous technological features, but start with a blank plastic card that can be printed with any combination of artwork, graphics, text, digital photograph, bar codes, logos, etc., limited only by the issuers imagination. Additional machine-readable information can also be encoded such as magnetic stripes and smart card chips.

Digital plastic card printing has replaced previous card generation methods and integrated the card delivery process into the electronic environment that runs and tracks the rest of your business or agency...

People have been creating and using identification cards since before the turn of the century. Prior to the early 1990s, Photo identification cards are generally produced using a traditional film based "Cut & Paste" method. The older, more traditional process for producing personal ID cards is a multi-step process.

1. Take an instant photo of the person, cut and trim the picture to fit the card.

2. Separately print the person's ID information on a card-sized piece of paper or card stock.

3. Laminate the picture and card together.

This process has been widely used in various applications including student ID cards, employee ID badges, club membership cards, and driver's licenses. But cards produced by this method are easily counterfeited. Although the initial investment for a "Cut & Paste" ID card system was relatively low, the time, labor and individual cost per card was high.

As a result, a new method called digital printing began to arise during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The New Way to Make ID Cards

Digital card printing is a one step process in which text, graphics and pictures are physically printed on a card directly from a computer system without any user intervention. These cards are usually the same size as a standard credit card and made of a plastic called Polyvinyl Chloride otherwise known as PVC. Plastic cards can be printed in monochrome or full color, front side only or on both sides.

Today, Digital Printing has become the technology of choice for the majority of organizations issuing identification cards -- and with good reason. Digital ID card systems are growing increasingly affordable, are easy to use and offer a host of benefits, including:

The image quality of plastic cards produced with digital printing technology is far superior to those produced through the traditional manual method described above. The cards look better because digitized photo images are sharper and can be edited for color quality. Its possible to print 16.7 million colors, Placement of various graphical elements of the card is more consistent and text is clearer and more readable. Unlimited card design possibilities exist.

Flexibility

Plastic card printers can print text, line art, and photographic images. They can also encode magnetic stripes and provide smart card chip programming contact stations to produce cards for access control, time and attendance, etc. All in a single step process. Card design software used to produce the cards provides users the flexibility to change designs, store and access multiple designs, create variable text fields, and implement data base programs to store images and track information.

Security

Plastic card printers can also apply various types of card protection materials to make cards resistant to tampering and alteration. These protection materials including hologram or visicode overlays, make cards more secure because they cannot be easily reproduced or counterfeited.

Durability

Card protection materials such as overlay varnishes, overlaminate patches, and secure card media each provide various levels of card durability by making the cards resistant to abrasion, UV light exposure, water damage, and exposure to liquid chemicals.

Economy

In-house printing of plastic cards eliminates both the need for, and costs associated with, producing cards using the time consuming, old-fashioned photographic cut-paste-laminate method. A plastic card printer is also more economical and hassle free than jobbing out your card requirements to a service bureau.

Speed

Ultra-fast production times. Digital ID card printers can produce complete, full-color photo ID badges in as fast as 25 seconds!

Printing your own plastic cards give you the convenience of being able to produce cards when you need them, where you need them, letting you issue new cards on demand. Having your own card printer capability also makes it easy to make changes to card content or design quickly.

... the list goes on and on. But to truly understand the benefits of digital printing, you should understand how it works. It's surprisingly simple.

Digital ID card systems are made up of four basic components. These components could be expertly configured for you by our technical staff.

The Photo ID Software allows you to create an ID card design and enter all the information you would like to appear on the ID card.

The Digital Camera captures a person's photo and loads it into the software. Pictures may also be scanned by using a Color Flatbed Scanner

The Digital ID Card Printer takes all the text, photos, and images from the software and prints them directly onto a plastic ID card.

And the Computer is what ties everything together.

As you can see, digital printing really is a fast, efficient, and easy way to produce ID cards. And the results are outstanding. Just look at all the features digital ID cards have to offer:

How Digital ID Card Printers Work

Both techniques involve a ribbon being heated as it passes under a thermal print head. The difference is that thermal transfer ribbons heat up and transfer ink onto the plastic card, and dye sublimation ribbons heat up and undergo a chemical change process that turns the ink into a gaseous state which then permeates the plastic card.

The ribbon used in color dye sublimation printing is partitioned by a number of consecutive color panels. Yellow, Magenta, and Cyan. The panels are grouped in a repeating series of the three process colors –along the entire length of the ribbon. This configuration is referred to as YMC.

Yellow	Magenta	Cyan	Yellow	Magenta	Cyan
These three colors are the primary colors used in printing to produce all other colors including black

The dye from the ribbon is applied to the plastic card via a multi-pass operation. This means the card will pass under the print head once for each of the three colored ribbon panels - applying each color separately.

Dye-Sublimation

Dye-Sublimation is the process digital ID card printers use to print smooth, continuous-tone images that look truly photographic. The term Dye Sublimation is also referred to as Dye Diffusion. When the Dye on the ribbon is heated by the print head it is transformed from a solid to a gas and diffused onto the plastic card (the card is specially coated to absorb the color dye). The hotter the elements in the print head, the more dye is converted to a gas and absorbed into the plastic card. At 300dpi the picture quality and continuous color tones produced by a dye sublimation printer out perform most laser or ink jet printers with higher resolutions. The advantage of dye sublimation is the millions of colors that can be created. The colors result from a combination of the panels on the ribbon. By combining the colors of each panel and by varying the heat used to transfer these colors, the printer is able to produce up to 16.7 million, photo-realistic colors.

Resin Thermal Transfer

Resin Thermal Transfer is the process digital ID card printers use to print sharp black text and crisp bar codes which can be read by both infra-red and visible-light bar code scanners. Like dye-sublimation, this process uses the same thermal print head to transfer color from the ribbon roll to the card. The difference, however, is that solid dots of color are transferred in the form of a resin-based ink which is fused to the surface of the card when heated. This produces very durable, single-color images. Thermal Transfer differs from Dye Sublimation in that Thermal Transfer uses Ink rather than Dye. Both Dye Sublimation and Thermal Ink (sometimes referred to as Resin) can be combined in one ribbon. This ribbon is referred to as a YMCK Ribbon. The letter "K" is the designator for the color black in the printing industry

Yellow	Magenta	Cyan	Black	Yellow	Magenta	Cyan	Black
Why do you need a separate black panel, when you can create black by mixing the three basic YMC colors together?

The answer to this question is simple. When black is created by mixing the YMC colors together it creates what is referred to as "Composite Black." Composite Black typically looks muddy or has a grayish tint when compared to Thermal Transfer (TT or resin) black. Composite Black is not recommended for printing bar codes since combining the three colors together does not produce the sharp edge many scanners require (this is invisible to the naked eye but can be observed under magnification). Composite Black is also invisible to IR scanners since there is no carbon in the dye. Since you may not know what type of scanner will be used, the rule is to always use TT (resin) black to print bar codes. All printers are capable of printing in monochrome using a single color ribbon. These ribbons are less expensive than full color multi-panel ribbons and can be either dye or ink (thermal transfer). The most commonly used monochrome ribbon is "Black" but there are several other colors available including; Red, Green, Blue, Yellow or Metallic Gold & Silver. Resin-only ribbons produce economical one-color cards in as fast as 5 seconds. These ribbons consist of a continuous roll of a single resin color and can produce up to 1,000 cards.

Dye Sublimation ribbons are preferred when you are printing pictures, since they can produce many shades of gray for a smoother look and a better picture quality. A resin black picture normally uses a dithered gray scale (gray made from a combination of pixels which limits the number of shades), producing a coarser, grainy look to the image.

Thermal Transfer (resin) ribbons should be used to print text, bar codes or single color graphics such as simple logos. Black monochrome ribbons are represented by the letter "K" followed by a lower case "r or d", (Kr or Kd). The "r" designates a Thermal Transfer ribbon with resin ink. The "d" designates a dye sublimation ribbon.

Magnetic stripe cards have been in existence since the early 70's when they were used on paper and film-based ID cards as well as credit cards. Magnetic stripe technology is widely used throughout the world and remains the dominant technology in the United States for transaction processing and access control. Other technologies such as PDF bar codes and smart chip cards are now capturing part of the magnetic stripe market since they can hold more information.

Magnetic stripe encoding terms:

A technical term used to designate how strong a magnetic field must be to affect data encoded on a magnetic stripe. Coercivity is measured in Oersteds (Oe). Coercivity is the measure of how difficult it is to encode information in a magnetic stripe.

Abbreviation for High Coercivity. HiCo magnetic stripes provide the highest level of immunity to damage by stray magnetic fields. They are more difficult to encode than LoCo magnetic stripes because the encoding requires more power. HiCo magnetic stripe cards are slightly more expensive for this reason.

Abbreviation for Low Coercivity. Easier to encode and slightly less expensive than HiCo magnetic stripe cards.

Selecting which type of magnetic stripe to adopt depends on how the card is to be used. Will the mag stripe be used daily, once a month, or just a couple of times a year? The chart below shows some of the applications where magnetic stripes are used and which stripe is common for that application.

The easiest way to determine visually if a stripe on a card is HiCo or LoCo is by the color. HiCo stripes are black and LoCo stripes are a lighter brown. Magnetic stripe readers are "blind" as to whether a stripe is HiCo or LoCo and are designed to read both.

Another term often used is Stripe-up and Stripe-down. Stripe-up means the magnetic stripe is on the front of the card and Stripe-down means the magnetic stripe is on the back of the card. This information is important when ordering a printer since the magnetic encoder must be installed differently for Stripe-up and Stripe-down models at the factory. The most common is Stripe-down.

Most printers with encoders follow the ISO standard for encoding, but can be changed via the Microsoft Windows™ driver to enable proprietary encoding. Proprietary encoding offers greater security and most readers can also be easily reprogrammed to read custom encoding.

There are a wide variety of contact and contact-less smart cards currently in use. The Terms "Smart Chip Card, IC Card, and Smart Card" all refer to the same type of card. Smart cards have a chip embedded in them which can be programmed. Smart cards can store over 100 times more information than a magnetic stripe and they can be reprogrammed to add, delete or rearrange data.

Smart cards were invented in Europe in the 1970s and were in wide use in Western Europe by the early 80s. Smart cards are an easy, inexpensive way for European businesses to do off-line transaction verification. The reason for off-line verification is preferred is the high cost of telecommunications throughout Europe. The United States has been slow to implement smart cards because it would require replacing the widely installed magnetic stripe card reading equipment with smart card readers. The cost of having the current magnetic stripe readers "on-line" via telecommunications is relatively inexpensive in the U.S. compared to the rest of the world.

The second type of smart card contains both a microprocessor as well as memory. These cards can store massive amounts of information, plus the micro-processor enables the card to make it's own decisions regarding the information stored.

Both types of chips can be addressed by digital printers since they all offer an optional smart card contact station. The printer brings the card into the contact station and then passes programming signals from an external programmer to encode the smart chip.

Contactless smart cards and proximity cards utilize various short and long range RFID technologies to write and read. Many card printers print on these kinds of smart cards. Encoding or programming the electronic devices on these cards is typically accomplished by an external encoding or programming device, but contactless smart card encoders integrated into the card printer are becoming increasingly available.

DURABILITY

Various types of materials are used to protect plastic cards. Overlay varnishes, holograms and patch overlaminates materials provide card durability and security, depending on user requirements.

Card durability has to do with how well the card withstands various forms of environmental stress. They include resistance to abrasion, such as passing the card through a magnetic stripe or bar code reader, protection from image fading when exposed to sunlight, and resistance to damage when immersed in water or exposed to chemicals.

Another important factor in applications such as drivers licensing is resistance to tampering, alteration, and/or replication. With the use of protective materials such as overlaminates, cards can be constructed to eliminate the potential of tampering and alteration.

Card security means that the card can be verified for authenticity. Techniques include the application of overlay varnish or overlaminate materials with hologram images. Use of these materials in constructing cards makes replication by anyone without access to the custom hologram image materials virtually impossible.

SELECTING THE RIGHT CARD PRINTER

Questions to consider:

Do you want to print Color or Monochrome cards?
Do you need to print on both sides of the card?
Do you need to encode magnetic stripes or smart card chips?
How many cards will you need to print per year?
How rugged and durable must the cards be?
How long do you need your cards to last (card life)?
How often will the card be swiped through a bar code or magnetic stripe reader?

Why Do We Need ID Cards?

The most basic reason for ID cards is to identify people. So, ask yourself why you need to identify people. Most organizations identify people for safety or security reasons. ID cards identify which people are authorized to be in or around your facility and which people are not.

Unauthorized visitors can be a nuisance, a distraction or even a threat to your employees, students, members or customers. They can also be costly if they are using your equipment or services without permission or without paying the necessary fee. In this regard, the question simply becomes do you have people, equipment, or services you would like to protect? If the answer is yes, ID cards can be an extremely effective solution.

Another primary reason for ID cards is convenience and efficiency. Digital ID cards can include bar codes, magnetic stripes or even small computer chips called smart chips. These extra features provide a host of automated applications you may not have even considered. For example, ID cards can be used for controlling access to restricted areas such as rooms, buildings, or parking lots. They can also be used for controlling access to equipment such as computers, copy machines or fax machines. If your facility has (or is) a cafeteria or store, ID cards can provide credit and debit programs for students, employees or customers. Today's ID cards can even be used for phone cards, for checking time and attendance, or for regulating admission to sporting events, theme parks, resorts, clubs and much more.

Just think how much time, money and hassle your organization could save through these convenient digital ID card features. Plus, even if you don't have a need for such features right away, your digital ID cards could easily be upgraded at any time to include one or all of these options.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of digital ID cards and how they can be helpful to your organization. If you have any questions about digital ID cards or would like more information on digital ID card systems, please feel free to contact us at security_india@vsnl.com

We look forward to helping your organization become as safe, secure and efficient as possible.