ID card printer

[andyturpie]

Morning,

 

Can anyone recommend a decent ID card printer? Looking for durability of the output as we don't want to have to keep reprinting out cards which have faded etc.

 

TIA,

 

Andy T

[Tesla]

We've been using the Magicard Enduro+ for a few years now, not had any issues AFAIK with faded cards etc.

 

Magicard Enduro + ID Card Printer - Essentra Security UK

[localzuk]

Cards are going to fade, that's just the reality of ID really - they get rubbed against, left in bright light etc... Unless you buy a printer that laminates cards too (read: expensive), your life expectancy is going to be about 1-3 years really.

 

We run an Evolis Primacy here. Good little machine, quick and pretty good quality. There is an additional module you can add to it to laminate cards (which adds 3 years to their life expectancy apparently), but its about £1500 IIRC.

[Rob_D]

+1 Magicard

We have a Rio pro. We have had to replace some cards due to fading and delamination, but they're 5+ year old cards (and only a couple in the 7 years I've been here). We replace way more due to them be lost or name/job title changes.

 

EDIT:

We recently moved to using fully enclosed badge holders to help improve the life of the ID badges.

Like these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/ID-Card-Clear-Enclosed-Holder/dp/B004FQN5CK

Edited September 22, 2017 by Rob_D

[3s-gtech]

We have https://www.digitalid.co.uk/product/idp-smart-50-card-printer-1062

 

The cards survive surprisingly well - even where they're split and cracked the print itself stayed legible. Ink ribbons aren't too costly.

[caffrey]

We have https://www.digitalid.co.uk/product/idp-smart-50-card-printer-1062

 

The cards survive surprisingly well - even where they're split and cracked the print itself stayed legible. Ink ribbons aren't too costly.

 

Good to know. We've just bought one of those too, initial impressions are good

[RichCowell]

We have https://www.digitalid.co.uk/product/idp-smart-50-card-printer-1062

 

The cards survive surprisingly well - even where they're split and cracked the print itself stayed legible. Ink ribbons aren't too costly.

 

+1 for this, we got it from the same company probably 6 years ago now and it's been fantastic... Their support has been great too when we've had issues (database after an upgrade and with Windows 10).

[3s-gtech]

Yup, their support is very good. We use the basic, free database for issuing cards (100 IDs max). Of course, you can just create new DBs for each group. The software is quite flexible and we have lots of details and designs on our cards now. Photo quality is excellent, especially compared to our LEA issued cards (everyone was jaundiced and they charged £10 a pop!)

[PotNoodleTech]

Well We've got an Evolis Primicy and I wouldn't buy another. The software is clunky/buggy when installed on network PCs (i.e all of them in the school nowadays) and the hardware is starting to make nasty whirring clunking noises. We've only printed under 2000 cards on it.

[bald_pig]

We have an Evolis Pebble 3 here, never had a problem with it. Software is a little clunky when designing a card but you're not constantly doing it so it's not really an issue.

[localzuk]

Well We've got an Evolis Primicy and I wouldn't buy another. The software is clunky/buggy when installed on network PCs (i.e all of them in the school nowadays) and the hardware is starting to make nasty whirring clunking noises. We've only printed under 2000 cards on it.

Which software? The driver? We run it on a network PC and have never had an issue with it. We use our own ID software on top of it. We've printed around 3500 cards on ours so far and no signs of issues as yet (printed 600 in the last month). Maybe you got a dud?

[Andycat]

We have an Evolis Dualyis that gets hammered, and is pretty reliable. Done 600 this month too.

[rad]

https://www.idcardcentre.co.uk/Evolis/EDIKIO-DUPLEX-PRICE-TAG-SOLUTION

 

We have the Evolis Ediko Duplex (or the next big one up) which prints a better quality than the Javelin 330 we had before. It's about to do a run of 600 cards, so I will report back next week if it causes issues.

 

The Javelin was a robust printer, served us well until the end when the issue related to age I think.

[googlemad]

The IDP ones are excellent, the Magicard ones we had were expensive and always seemed to require a lot of maintenance, plus were a pain to reliably have running through the network!

 

We had a Primacy, it was problematic from Day 1, I remember spending £300 - £400 on a new head for it then shortly after it totally went bust and I had it to pieces! But the enrolments team seemed happy it was gone!

 

My advice would also be if you can afford it purchase an additional printer identical to your production one and just keep it in the box, there is nothing worse than having an out of action ID card printer during enrolment season!!! (We used to do enrolments / ID cards during open days too so it was handy having 2 printers knocking cards out)

[Chay]

I've used a lot of card printers in my line of work. I have always found the Fargo ID Card printers from HID to be the most reliable and cheapest to run. In Australia i use IdentityPeople . But i know HID are a global company and have many Fargo distributors all over the world.