XPM 200HR™
Thermal Printer Family
HENGSTLER
®
Part No. D 690 074
Mod. No. 4 300113 LEV
page 25 of 32
7.6. XPM 200HR™ Digital Tools
The XPM 200HR™ family of thermal printers includes with the Windows XP/7 driver a series
of very useful tools. These can be run directly from the Tools folder of the driver package
once the driver has been installed. A brief summary of these tools is shown below.
Note:
It is important to note that the behavior of the XPM 200HR™ is heavily
dependent upon the settings determined by the Configuration Tool.
XPM 200HR™ Command Tool:
Tool for sending Native Commands to the printer. Very
useful while developing code for your application.
XPM 200HR™ Configuration Tool:
A very important tool that allows you to change virtually
any variable setting or performance characteristic of your XPM 200HR™ printer.
XPM 200HR™ Diagnostic Tool:
A powerful tool for identifying possible issues with your
printer, its peripherals and firmware by examining the details of its operation.
XPM 200HR™ Font Tool:
Used for uploading and assigning different fonts within the XPM
200HR™ printer.
XPM 200HR™ Image Tool:
This very helpful tool creates XPM 200HR™ format graphic files
from standard format graphic files so they can be uploaded as stored images.
XPM 200HR™ Print Terminal:
The Print Terminal has six sets of 24 buttons each, many of
them preprogrammed to transmit commands to your XPM 200HR™ printer. All buttons are
programmable to make them transmit whatever is needed. This tool is very popular with
software developers who are integrating the XPM 200HR™ into their products as a tool that
they use to verify command sequences and responses.
XPM 200HR™ Uninstaller Tool:
Use this tool to uninstall single or all versions of the XPM
200HR™ driver.
XPM 200HR™ Upload Tool:
Used to upload new firmware, specific data files, etc. to the
flash area of your XPM 200HR™ printer.
XPM 200HR™ Wide Font Tool:
Used for uploading Wide Font formats (such as Chinese or
Korean) from standard graphic files.
8.
Low Current Operation
There are numerous factors that affect thermal printer current. It is possible to manipulate these
factors consciously to reduce current draw for situations where this is important, such as operating
from batteries. If battery operation only occurs when power has failed, the host software can be
programmed to print at a faster, higher current rate during normal operation and then switch the
XPM 200HR™ to a lower current mode when the system switches to battery operation. The following
are some considerations to aid in reducing current draw.
8.1. Print Speed
With thermal printers, average current is proportional to print speed. Since the burn time for
each dot row is fixed, when printing slower there is more pause between burns and therefore
a lower average current. (The peak current is determined by the number of dots burned at
once, and so is unaffected by print speed.) The XPM 200HR™ target print speed (called the
“target speed” because other settings may cause the actual print speed to be lower than this)
can be set via the interface; please refer to the XPM 200HR™ Emulation Command Set
Reference for the specific command sequence. The slower this print speed is, the lower the
average current draw will be. Note that when using the XPM 200HR™ Windows XP/7 driver,
the driver will override settings sent to the printer directly via the interface.
