fiza Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 Probably been asked before but is it cheaper to print ID Badges yourselves or get an external company to do them? I am thinking proper plastic cards not laminated paper ones. We have requests for badges for new staff, replacement of lost badges and we have to do all the Y12 badges when the Academic year starts. Currently we do laminated paper ones which we want to move away from and go with proper plastic cards.
Andycat Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 We do our own with evolis printers. Used for Printers, doors, library and lunches so we do plenty each day!
robyholmes Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 In house here, couldn't be without it. All our students (Secondary no sixth form) have ID's. So as you can guess we have a number of them who lose them. Students pay for replacement cards which covers the cost.
jezi55 Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 We use Zebra Card studio, if i remember the printer was about £300 and the cards/ink are dirt cheap. Software is really easy to use and design ID cards.
FishCustard Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 In house with an IDP Smart 30. Works well. External costs are wayyy too high, as well as being a hassle to manage. The printer sits on my desk and doesn't take up much space, and I can print the things on demand.
6Foot2 Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 (edited) Not sure how the pricing compares, but we print in-house on a Zebra Card Printer and Mifare encoder. Edited October 19, 2018 by 6Foot2 Correct a typo.
3s-gtech Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 In house on an IDP Smart-50. It paid for itself within a few months, awesome piece of kit.
fiza Posted October 19, 2018 Author Posted October 19, 2018 In house on an IDP Smart-50. It paid for itself within a few months, awesome piece of kit. Discontinued now. How many ID Cards do you print off on one run? - - - Updated - - - In house here, couldn't be without it. All our students (Secondary no sixth form) have ID's. So as you can guess we have a number of them who lose them. Students pay for replacement cards which covers the cost. What card printer do you use?
RichCowell Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 We have done ours in house for years now, got it from Digital ID - can't recommend them highly enough, their support has been fantastic - https://www.digitalid.co.uk/product/idp-smart-31-card-printer-2608
hardtailstar Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 We do ours in house and HR does all the printing.
steveg Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 (edited) In-house has the big advantage that they can be ready almost instantly, ideal for new starters, lost badges and when Ofsted come and staff suddenly admit to having lost their badge 6 months ago! Would also say that we use Digital-id too for all of our supplies, and have been very impressed. Currently using a Smart 30 printer, doing around 100 badges a year. Steve Edited October 19, 2018 by steveg
skell Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 Just to hijack this slightly - any badge software that links into SIMS?
3s-gtech Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 Discontinued now. How many ID Cards do you print off on one run? Anything from one, for new staff, to 40+ for students. The hopper takes quite a few, but the free version of the software that it comes with will only do 50 IDs in one file/database so you have to load a new one in for more.
Katy Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 We use a Magicard Rio+ 360 printer, think it was about £900. The ink film is about £40 I think, does 300 cards. (There's other models that can do all sorts of encoding but they cost more, and we don't need them as we just buy pre-encoded RFID cards just with random numbers) Edit: For staff passes we print out of Net2 software, for pupil IDs we print from a program I wrote which pulls name, photo etc out of iSAMS and spits out a card.
PotNoodleTech Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 In house is WAAAAAAY cheaper. Card printer and a big stack of cards and get printing!
FishCustard Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 a program I wrote which pulls name, photo etc out of iSAMS and spits out a card. Ooooohhhh I'm intrigued. I don't need it, as we don't use iSAMS and don't use student cards (special school = students escorted everywhere), but as a programmer I'm curious!
Andycat Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 We use SmartCardStore for supplies, never been an issue. Print about 1000 a year using Biostore ID Manager linked to SIMS.
fiza Posted October 19, 2018 Author Posted October 19, 2018 We use SmartCardStore for supplies, never been an issue. Print about 1000 a year using Biostore ID Manager linked to SIMS. Tell me more please. We use Biostore ID Manager. How does ID Manager print cards?
kennysarmy Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 In-house here....and we just use them for Print Release....
Andycat Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 Tell me more please. We use Biostore ID Manager. How does ID Manager print cards? The card printer is it's printer, but it only works with Evolis printers. Prints and programs the mifare card. You have to design it first and use templates, but it works well.
fiza Posted October 19, 2018 Author Posted October 19, 2018 it only works with Evolis printers. Why only Evolis? Surely a printer is a printer?
Andycat Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 Why only Evolis? Surely a printer is a printer? You'd think wouldn't you? But an awkward return of a Magicard Rio this Summer says otherwise!. Only Evolis as yet.
Jamman960 Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 We use Lesar.co.uk/Card Hero for all of our cards, it works out cheaper for us as we only issue cards to staff/regular visitors so needed a large amount at first followed by around 30 per year in theory - once we've purchased the credits each card is 1 credit and there are no minimum order whereas most similar companies charge ridiculous amounts for small quantities and only really become good value for 20+ at a time
DGardiner Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 ive got an IDP SMART 51s and use cardpresso to make the cards
Katy Posted October 19, 2018 Posted October 19, 2018 Ooooohhhh I'm intrigued. I don't need it, as we don't use iSAMS and don't use student cards (special school = students escorted everywhere), but as a programmer I'm curious! There's an API with iSAMS that spits out an XML file with all the pupil details in, and another one which gives you a zip containing the photo thumbnails named by pupilID. As it's part of a larger system there's a PHP script running on a cron job which downloads the data/photos and crunches through it once a day, dumping it out into mysql. Then the card printing program (done in C#) just pulls the list of pupils out of mysql, sticks them in a tree so i can click an individual one, and on the fly knocks up an A4 sized PNG with their name, photo, and (pupilID encoded into a barcode). Then prints this set to "fit to page". (I used to create the pass image the correct size but it printed blurred, making the image A4 then resizing down it's nice and clear). Other feature is bulk print, you just paste a list of pupil IDs into a box and it works through them 1
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