IDSecurityonline’s Newest ID-Card Printer Lineup

At IDSecurityOnline, we regularly refresh our selection of ID card printers to ensure our customers have access to the latest and best printing technology. Leading card-printer manufacturers continuously improve their technology, print speeds and security options, so here’s a quick look at what’s new.

Fargo’s Newest Printer

The Fargo DTC1500 ID card printer is the newest addition to Fargo’s expansive DTC line, builds on Fargo’s 20 years of proven direct-to-card printing expertise, and brings some great new features. Security, lower cost, innovation, and versatility is all standard with the DTC1500.

DTC1500 card printer/encoder offers high-capacity consumables (which are both convenient and lower cost) and a comprehensive feature set—including robust data-encoding features—enabling organizations to quickly issue highly secure cards and IDs at a fraction of the cost without sacrificing quality.

For users seeking affordable enhanced visual card security, one significant improvement offered with the DTC1500 is the ability to design and upload custom overlay watermark designs—at no additional cost. This built-in, custom watermark overlay function allows a customized transparent security image (a logo, symbol, or text) to be integrated as a permanent watermark within the printed card’s overlay panel—rendering duplication virtually impossible and preventing fraud. The DTC1500’s custom watermark provides a cost-efficient increase in card security to thwart counterfeiters, without requiring investment in holographic overlaminates or foil cards.

The DTC1500 also features a unique resin-scramble data-protection feature—which renders used ribbon black panels unreadable by scrambling the resin. This handy security fix affords additional peace of mind for those worried about protecting sensitive data.

With easy-to-activate dual-sided printing, optional lamination or encoding modules, and the innovative resin threshold settings for darker, cleaner text and barcodes, there’s a lot to like in the modular, scalable DTC1500.

IDP’s New Printers

The IDP Smart-51 ID card printer, the next generation of and an upgrade from its mid-range Smart-50 printer, retains the successful and reliable features of its predecessor, but includes a new 10% faster print speed/time, allowing users to more readily batch-print cards edge-to-edge in 300, 600 and 1200dpi. The IDP Smart-51 with lamination is available to laminate cards—for longer-lasting and tamper-resistant cards.

The newest low- to mid-level printer from IDP, the Smart-31 card printer, is a great solution for those with smaller budgets who want durability, convenience, great imaging, and encoding-option upgrades. It prints full-color cards five seconds faster than its predecessor Smart-30 model and comes in both a single- or dual-sided configuration (which can be field upgraded to dual sided when you’re ready).

Zebra’s New Printers

Zebra has released a new printer series, the “ZC” line. The Zebra ZC350 ID Card Printer is feature-packed for exceptional performance—a card printer that’s flexible, secure, easy to set up, easy to use, and easy to manage. Advanced printing options allow creation of any design users can imagine. The ZC350’s support for nearly every encoding technology permits creation of any type of card—credit, debit, identity, access, loyalty, public transportation passes and more. Most importantly, it prints really fast—up to twice as fast as some competitive printers.

With its three unique printer-ribbon options, the ZC350 allows users to print visually secure ID cards. Ribbons include a pearlescent resin for adding color-shifting images, another with a silver panel and dye receptive layer for printing 3D effects, and a third with a long-lasting overlay that can extend card life 4x or add a watermark to ID cards.

Compact, easy-to-use and affordable, the ZC100 is what many are calling the best single-sided-only printer, designed/ideal for reliable low-volume but essential workhorse card-printing applications in color or monochrome. This printer is easy to set up, use, and manage. The new driver provides a graphical user interface that makes managing the printing process and card visuals simple. The optional magnetic-stripe encoder and integration kit for contactless encoders enhance card printing flexibility. Printing speed is up to 30% faster than its Zebra predecessor—saving your team and customers time.

To print oversized badges (e.g., VIP and press passes, event and concert tickets, convention name badges, etc.), the Zebra ZC10L large format printer uses large cards measuring 3.5? x 5.5? and prints in full color.

Magicard’s New Printer

The Magicard Rio Pro 360 keeps the features users love about the original Rio Pro, but adds significant improvements—a five-second faster print speed per color card (Magicard’s fastest printer yet), increased capacity, improved print quality, significantly improved performance, and updated HoloKote and Custom HoloKote options. All of this is powered by the all-new LYNK onboard intelligence—for identity with an IQ.

The Rio Pro 360 lets users select from 10 predesigned HoloKote watermark images built into the driver when adding a watermark-style design to cards. Like the old Rio Pro, the Rio Pro 360 allows users to add a Custom HoloKote —but now permits use of as many as 10 unique stored Custom HoloKote designs. This feature takes customized security to a new level.

The Magicard Rio Pro 360 ID Card Printer meets the need to produce secure badges in a cost-effective way in high volumes. It’s feature-packed for unsurpassed performance, offers increased capacity and improved print quality, single or dual-sided printing, and optional encoding capabilities.