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16.2 Print Head 

 

 

Bulk ink delivery system (optional) 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 
 

 
 

Print head 
 
 
 
 
Note: If using the bulk ink delivery 
system, it must be installed 12 to 36 
inches (304 to 914 mm) above the 
print head.
 

12 to 36 in 

304 to 914 mm

For 

information

Summary of Contents for Markem-Imaje 1050

Page 1: ...F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 2: ...F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 3: ...ut 10 4 3 Layout Designer Menus 12 4 4 Creating Clocks Timestamps Shift Codes and User Inserts 13 4 4 1 Clocks 13 4 4 2 Timestamps 14 4 4 3 Shift Codes 16 4 4 4 User Inserts 17 4 4 5 Counters 17 4 5 Adding and Editing Objects in a Layout 18 4 5 1 General Editing 18 4 5 2 Text Objects 19 4 5 3 Barcodes 22 4 5 4 Bitmaps 28 4 5 5 Conditional Bitmaps 29 4 6 Previewing a Layout 30 5 Data Workflow 31 5 ...

Page 4: ...2 1 External Encoder 44 10 2 2 Encoder Usage and InfiniteDPI 45 10 3 Upgrades 46 10 3 1 Firmware Upgrade 46 10 3 2 Replace Head 46 10 4 Advanced Properties 47 10 5 Images and Data 48 10 6 Spitting 49 11 Print History 50 12 Setting up a Printer 51 12 1 Printer Components 51 12 2 Encoder Speed Scaling 51 13 Resolution and Barcodes 52 14 Backing Up and Restoring Data 53 15 Troubleshooting the Printer...

Page 5: ...cessary operator training and skills Wide support for barcodes including 1D 2D and postal formats Print at any horizontal DPI and at both 300 and 600 DPI vertically 165 ft min at 600 DPI to 660 ft min at 150 DPI International Character Support TCP IP remote control via second LAN interface Multi lingual interface Unlimited variable data Unlimited image width User friendly printer configuration Rob...

Page 6: ...any size see Resolution and Barcodes Allows the DPI to be precisely tuned to minimize ink usage Allows sub optimal substrates to be used for high quality printing Allows the print parameters to be tuned to increase printer speed For example typically print resolutions are set at 300 DPI to provide for sufficient contrast for scannability With InfiniteDPI the resolution may for example be set to 27...

Page 7: ...otate text at any angle Have multiple fonts and font styles in a single text box with a wide variety of standard text formatting options such as centering and word wrap 2 6 2 International Character Support All printable text supports any international characters available on the Windows platform If a tool is installed for entry of Asian language characters press CTRL SPACE to enter IME mode F o r...

Page 8: ...Selection screen for creating new jobs or printing editing or deleting existing jobs Production information displays the print count for the selected job Tools button opens a menu with system tools for managing monitoring and configuring the printer Data Source information displays the source of data for the selected job Profile button allows the selection of access level Shut down button exits th...

Page 9: ...nt preview displays a preview of the selected job Back button returns to the Home screen Edit button opens the Layout Editor for editing the selected job New Job button opens a menu to design the pen configuration and layout settings for a new job Delete button deletes the selected job Select For Printing button selects the selected job for printing Job name Scroll arrows Selected for printing Sel...

Page 10: ...onfiguration allows configuration of printer features such as print direction encoders and sensors pen voltage time and spitting settings Profile Management allows configuration of access levels and passwords Configure I O allows specified events to control an alarm tower or signal a PLC or other external equipment of printer status Optional equipment might be required The Change to Metric button ...

Page 11: ...will appear Press the keyboard icon and a soft keyboard will appear Enter text To view text that is obscured by the soft keyboard press on the title bar hold down and drag the keyboard Press the close box to accept the text entered and close the soft keyboard F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 12: ...d most edit menus are disabled A layout must be created or loaded to begin work It is possible to create layouts that require more pens than are available to the attached printer These jobs can be saved and viewed in print preview but will not print without the appropriate hardware and licenses A warning will appear if a layout requires more pens than are available in the configured printer Icon f...

Page 13: ...et of brackets enclosing a unique name for the field Timestamps shift codes and user inserts can have any unique name that does not match an existing field name External source data fields have the form Field where is the number of the field without leading zeroes Dynamic fields are replaced with the appropriate data when a job is printed Fields can be placed multiple times on a layout Every insta...

Page 14: ...The layout shown above has 4 pens defined with the first two pens and the last two pens linked as indicated by the icon When two pens are linked they are rendered together and layout objects like text are allowed to cross over the pen boundaries It is assumed that the printer used to print these images has the linked pens physically stitched so this will print correctly In this example each set of...

Page 15: ...isual marker and has no effect on layout Objects may be placed anywhere inside either white section Objects may also be moved off of the white area to allow printing as close to the edge as needed Care must be taken to ensure areas that are off the white areas of the layout print correctly as nothing will be printed outside the white layout areas The vertical ruler is only for easing layout The va...

Page 16: ...it Copy Copy one or more selected objects for pasting Edit Paste Paste any objects previously cut or copied to the currently selected grid The Layout Menu contains items for adding objects to the layout including text barcodes and pictures Layout Add Advanced Text add a text object to the layout Layout Add Barcode add 1D 2D or postal barcodes to the layout Layout Add Bitmap add a bitmap image to t...

Page 17: ... Direction to Before and the Hours dropdown box to 6 If it is currently 7 A M the time for the 6HrsBefore clock would be 1 A M The New button allows a new clock to be created Any text with the exception of and can be used in a clock description Changes are saved by selecting the OK button The Cancel button will discard any changes made since the dialog box was opened TIP If an expiration code chan...

Page 18: ...le the Date and Time Appropriate for Locale DTL was chosen from the Time Format Strings list in the center of the screen The symbol for this string DTL is shown below it to the left of the Insert button After selection the Insert button is selected to insert this string into the displayed TimeStamp String box The TimeStamp String box shows that the DTL was inserted for this timestamp To delete str...

Page 19: ...he values the Insert button was selected and the Alpha weekday string was added All Alpha timestamp strings and the Text string which allows any text are edited by double tapping or double clicking on the string in the TimeStamp String box This will open a dialog box which will allow the values mapped to be changed TIP Free form text can be added by adding a Text object located at the bottom of th...

Page 20: ... text for this shift code is printed when the time is greater than or equal to the Start Hour and Start Minute and less than the Start Hour and Start Minute of the next shift code The clock used to compare to these times is selected at the top In this case the default clock was selected so the current time on the computer will be used to determine the shift code that is printed After editing the v...

Page 21: ... is the unique ID that is entered into layout objects This ID and its brackets will be replaced at print time with the data entered by the operator The User Prompt is the phrase that is displayed to the operator when prompted for the data The Default Value is the default that is used if the operator does not change the value 4 4 5 Counters F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 22: ...dded to the layout is shown selected as indicated by the small red squares A selected object can be moved by pressing and holding the object or by clicking and holding the left mouse button and dragging around the layout The blue dashed lines indicate that the pens are linked Objects cannot be dragged from one set of linked pens to another unless they are linked as shown in the figure on the left ...

Page 23: ...wed Adding an object to a particular set of linked pens requires that the set of pens be selected before adding the object A narrow black border will surround the active set of pens 4 5 2 Text Objects A text object can be added by selecting Abc or using the Layout Add Advanced Text menu item The Text Properties screen opens This same screen opens by double tapping or double clicking on a text obje...

Page 24: ...nging its height Draft Mode causes the text to be drawn at half resolution This conserves ink while allowing full resolution for other objects on the screen such as barcodes The Apply button applies changes to the text box without closing the Text Properties dialog box International Character Support is supported here If an IME tool for entry of Asian language characters is installed press CTRL SP...

Page 25: ...pplies when resizing by dragging the resize borders in this release Entering a new value will change the aspect ratio Force Square causes the height and width to be equal during any resizing Character based word wrap causes text to be wrapped at any character instead of at word breaks typically spaces This is useful for languages that do not have word breaks The Justification and Borders tab has s...

Page 26: ...hecksum digits and other properties This manual is not intended as a tutorial on barcodes and familiarity with the uses of a particular barcode in specific applications may be necessary to have it print properly The figure above shows the sample layout with a Code 128 barcode added When added the Code 128 barcode has 10 digits of default data entered Different barcodes may have different default v...

Page 27: ...ntal pixels for 1D barcodes and both horizontal and vertical pixels for 2D barcodes Barcodes printed using inkjet printers may be more readable if some pixel shaving is done The ratio string allows direct selection of the barcode ratio for narrow to wide bars This is an advanced option and should only be used for custom barcode drawing On the right bearer bars can be selected for barcodes Below th...

Page 28: ...the barcode data is appropriate For example for EAN13 if twelve digits are entered the thirteenth digit is calculated automatically If thirteen digits are entered it is assumed the data includes the pre calculated check digit If the Sample Data field is filled the barcode in the layout screen will be rendered with this data The final print barcode including print previews will not use this data Th...

Page 29: ...character D only in CODABAR Only for Pharmacode encode the Pharmacode directly bar by bar Only for Data Matrix use an alternative error correction algorithm for symbols of size 144x144 E Translate the Escape Sequences that the input data contains S Only for MaxiCode enables setting the values of Date Preamble Service Class Postal and Country Code directly in the barcode data only in conjunction wi...

Page 30: ... ddd ASCII character in decimal notation ddd up to decimal digits 0 9 First digit must not be zero xhh For encoding bytes or ASCII characters in hexadecimal notation hh hexadecimal digits 0 F Crrggbb Color selection See Pharmacode Ce Reset the color to default F FNC1 Function Number Character 1 used as field separator EAN 128 UCC 128 Codablock F MicroPDF417 a special FNC1 codeword is inserted when...

Page 31: ...DC1 Code93 Code93Ext x12 DC2 Code93 Code93Ext x13 DC3 Code93 Code93Ext x14 DC4 Code93 Code93Ext x1e Rs Record Separator ASCII 1EHex PDF417 QR Code Data Matrix MaxiCode Mode 3 4 SCM x1d Gs Group Separator ASCII 1DHex PDF417 QR Code Data Matrix MaxiCode Mode 3 4 SCM Note that to display a character requires a double backslash when Translate Escape Sequences is active If Human Readable Text is checke...

Page 32: ...f objects the last to be rendered Objects rendered first may be overlaid by objects rendered later 4 5 4 Bitmaps Add a bitmap to the active set of linked pens by selecting the Bitmap button on the toolbar or selecting Layout Add Bitmap A file dialog box will open allowing the selection of a bitmap to import Large pictures may take a long time to load Many image formats are supported and color imag...

Page 33: ...rtical resolution bitmaps should have 600 pixels per inch in the vertical direction to render correctly The bitmap properties allow a new file to be loaded for the selected image or the position and size to be manually entered If a rotated bitmap is desired it should be rotated before it is loaded to ensure the highest quality image 4 5 5 Conditional Bitmaps In the Bitmap Properties screen the bit...

Page 34: ... job to preview The print preview of the selected job will appear on the left side of the screen Dark arrows can be used to move obscured portions of an image The user can view more of the image by touching the arrow pointing to the obscured area Press A larger print preview of the selected job will appear on Home screen Use the to reduce the size of the preview Use the to enlarge the size of the ...

Page 35: ...e A local job source is one controlled by the local printer and local to the file system of the currently running printer There are two options for local jobs either a fixed job that is always loaded at print time or an operator selected job An operator selected job allows the operator to select a job from the Hydra jobs directory for printing Remote jobs are controlled by the 1050 Remote TCP inte...

Page 36: ...your provider is essential for correct operation Finally the SQL query that will return the data desired for printing must be entered This must be a valid SQL statement for the provider and database selected The columns selected will be used in the order they appear in the result set as the values of the data field in the layout job For example Field 1 in a job will be the first column in the SQL ...

Page 37: ... listen on By default this is 127 0 0 1 and port 700 In addition to TCP IP remote control software plugins that allow different remote protocols can be added to the product A standard plugin for remote control via an RS 232 serial port is included To use a plugin select the Plugin option from the drop down box 5 4 Language The Language tab allows selection of the language of the user interface and...

Page 38: ...ofile Management in the Tools menu is configured The default access level after startup is Operator To change the access level Press Profile Log On Press in the Password text box for the keyboard icon to appear Press for the soft keyboard to appear Enter a valid password and then press the close box Press the Logon button and the Back button F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 39: ...Edit Role The screen above shows the Administrator role with all tasks that can be controlled via the Role Management window enabled Deselecting tasks will cause the button that allows access to the feature to be hidden for the role If the administrator password is forgotten or you otherwise lose full access the User ID rsiadmin and the password rsi are hard coded into the system F o r i n f o r m...

Page 40: ...e will only have an effect if the Markem Imaje I O controller is included in your printer or you purchase the optional accessory box with an I O controller included Green Yellow and Red indicate the relays that are normally connected to the Green Yellow and Red lights on the Markem Imaje alarm tower which may be an optional accessory with your printer as well F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 41: ... be closed The Backup Data button copies the entire Hydra directory structure to a backup location Backups are rotated between two locations and are only marked complete after a successful backup This will ensure that there will always be at least one good backup of the configuration and job data at all times The Backup Data button manually backs up the Hydra directory Selecting Restore Data copie...

Page 42: ...job requires data the following screen will open The Data button is available only if the Workflow settings allow operator selected data or a remote database via ADO NET is specified Various flat file formats can be loaded here The options for the data file format must be selected before the Data button is selected F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 43: ...ata screen will open When the settings are as desired press the Ok button After the data is loaded the View Data tab will be displayed If the data is loaded correctly the data will be shown on the View Data screen F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 44: ...sed to print If Start from first Selected Row is selected then when printing is started the data used will be used starting from the first selected row Enter a record number and select Go To Record to move to that record in the loaded database It is not possible to edit data in this view If it is desired to print a subset of data it should be done by selecting Print Selected Rows Only and selectin...

Page 45: ...41 9 3 Start Pause Printing The Start printing button starts printing of the selected job The Pause printing button pauses printing of the selected job F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 46: ...erties of the attached pen cartridges and the estimated remaining ink levels The type of cartridge affects the drop size which will affect the rate of ink usage estimation The size single use or various bulk sizes can also be selected F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 47: ... The Distance from Sensor column determines how long the print pen will wait before firing that pen The sensor is the object detection sensor that is typically placed before the print head Alternatively this is the distance that the pen will wait before printing from the internally generated edge signal The Fine Adj adjusts the distance of the pen from the sensor by individual pixels This number c...

Page 48: ...any set of stitched pens is 20 pixels This maximum applies to each pen in a job If more than 20 pixels are stitched among any pens the amount above 20 pixels will be ignored 10 2 Encoder and Edges This screen configures the properties of the positional encoder and the edge sensor 10 2 1 External Encoder For best results an external encoder should be attached to the printer The encoder speed indica...

Page 49: ...nches second or cm second For best print quality using the internal encoder use a vertical DPI of 300 This will eliminate blur in the image and speed variations will only cause the printed image to stretch or shrink The Disable InfiniteDPI check box causes the printer to print at a small subset of allowable DPIs This must be checked if a set of linked pens spans two or more heads to ensure proper ...

Page 50: ...re two ways to incorporate the license and IP address information from the selected file The Replace Head button incorporates the license and IP address information from the selected file overwriting the existing information in the selected head This can be useful if an upgraded or replacement head is installed and you would like to save other settings such as Distance From Sensor Pen Fire Voltage...

Page 51: ... head to fire Print quality may vary with varying pulse width and voltage settings If multiple heads are available the arrow keys on the lower left will be enabled These are used to move the selected head up or down on the list if it is desired to change to order in which the pens are assigned to the layouts If a head is moved or added to this printer it can be added by selecting Add Head and sele...

Page 52: ...s frequently paused the printer is not stopped but target items stop triggering for example when a line is stopped Since the image is not rendered until an edge is detected the time stamps will also be current when an image is printed Depending on the complexity of the image and speed of the transport there is a minimum distance required between the edge sensor and the first pen in this mode Typic...

Page 53: ...ns The Spit timeout is in seconds The Spit timeout counter starts after the end of the prior image Spit distance is the distance from the leading edge of the print image to spit This must be less than the distance of the pens from the edge sensor This setting is per head so if the distance is less than the pen to sensor distance on some pens spitting will occur on those pens If the Spit distance i...

Page 54: ... pane The pieces per hour for short run times may be inaccurate due to rounding The drops printed is based on actual drops printed at the printer The volume of ink actually used will vary based on pen settings and print conditions The Save button saves the print history as an HTML file The Audit Log screen shows the last login for the three built in user roles and operating parameters for the prin...

Page 55: ...oder must be set in the printer configuration Using the InfiniteDPI mode of the printer makes this an easy task Every installation contains one test job called PenTest job in the Hydra jobs directory This is a 300 DPI image that contains a four inch image plus two nozzle priming bars on either side If this image is printed then length of the center image should be exactly four inches long If it is...

Page 56: ...erefore to print the barcode with high accuracy the module size must be a multiple of 3 333 at 300 DPI or some distortion of the barcode will occur If the barcode is large this might not be noticeable However small barcodes may not be scannable if the module size is not chosen correctly In the layout window the available module sizes for barcodes are selected based on the horizontal resolution It ...

Page 57: ...drive in the default installation If the primary data directory becomes corrupted the data from these directories can be used to restore your jobs printer license files and other information This backup process guards against data corruption or accidental file deletion during operation Although the backup process guards against corruption it does not guard against disk failure Regular backups of i...

Page 58: ... If the print head is connected the firmware version will be displayed in the Printer Information window If so verify that at least one pen with a print cartridge is available The pen must be in a position that is required for the print job A message of Head Pen connected will appear for each pen needed for the job that is connected Printer starts but no images print Job has no printable objects R...

Page 59: ...icensed cartridges and they are not detected at print start an Invalid Cartridge message will appear No pens with invalid cartridges will print Incorrect Voltage or Fire Time In the Printer Configuration window under advanced settings ensure that the voltage and fire time are not too low Print quality is poor Nozzles are clogged Print nozzles can become clogged if the printer is idle and the cartr...

Page 60: ... Any farther any the drops will begin to diverge causing the print to appear blurred Transport moving too fast The maximum speed for the transport is 333 ft min at 300 DPI The speed of the transport is shown while printing on the print screen Printer stops while printing Print controller stopped responding If a print controller is powered down loses connectivity or otherwise fails the printer will...

Page 61: ... Floor Space Plan 16 1 Controller Drawings are not binding Markem Imaje reserve the right to alter specifications and design of the product at any time without giving prior notice F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 62: ...ead Bulk ink delivery system optional Print head Note If using the bulk ink delivery system it must be installed 12 to 36 inches 304 to 914 mm above the print head 12 to 36 in 304 to 914 mm F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 63: ...F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

Page 64: ...F o r i n f o r m a t i o n ...

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