Color Dye
Sublimation
Color imaging involves three passes of cards
under a print head. Yellow, magenta, and cyan
dyes diffuse from corresponding ribbon panels
onto the cards in measured quantities for each
dot of a 300 dpi matrix. Each ribbon panel can
produce 32 dye densities on a dot-by-dot ba-
sis. Therefore, the range of colors for each dot
is 32.7K.
Gray-Scale Dye
Sublimation
Gray scale imaging involves a single pass of
cards under the print head. Measured quanti-
ties of black dye diffuse from the ribbon onto
the cards on a dot-by-dot basis. Each card dot
can have 32 different densities.
Resin Thermal
Transfer
Monochrome ribbons and the monochrome
panels of multiple-panel ribbons produce solid
imaging by transferring a very durable resin
material onto cards. Resin either transfers or
not on a dot-by-dot basis. Unlike dye sublima-
tion, no in-between conditions exist to produce
a gray scale within each dot. Particularly Bar
Codes, but also Text, Lines, and Rectangles of-
ten get composed using solid images. Also
Thermal Transfer ribbons come in a variety of
colors other than black. However, bar code
readers need black bar codes.
Overlay Varnish
Thermal Transfer
Ribbons with Dye Sublimation panel(s) typi-
cally also have an Overlay Varnish Thermal
Transfer panel. These include YMCKrO,
YMCKrOKr, and KsO ribbons. Both color and
gray-scale dyes fade with exposure to ultravio-
let radiation. A coating of overlay varnish gives
images a much longer life. Notably, only dye
sublimation images require this protection.
Resin images hold their color without the pro-
tection of overlay varnish. P500 Overlaminate
ribbons with die-cut patches or transfer mate-
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980179-001 Rev. A
Operation
