Three things you need to know when trouble shooting label printing issues
Label printers are incredibly reliable, so failures are very rare. There are a few things, though, that can present as issues, but which are easily fixable with a little label printer know-how.
When customers call in with printing issues, there are three things I always ask them to check. One or other of these simple configuration checks resolves the vast majority of all printing questions:
I ask customers to check whether auto-calibration is on. Auto calibration is a feature where a sensor detects the gap between each label and aligns the label to the start of the print job. It is there to ensure that there are no misaligned prints.
So if a customer tells me that their label printing is mis-aligned, that is usually the cause.
‘Why have an option to turn it off?’ some ask. The reason is that some customers use continuous feed media - that is, labels with no gap. Whilst 95% of clients use labels with gaps, we do also need to cater for the 5%, hence having an on/off option.
‘I set up my new printer, hit print and I get a print error message’. If I hear that in a client conversation, I advise that they check the port number. The print error message usually means that the port number in the driver doesn’t match the port set up in the printer. The fix is to go into the Windows driver and change the port number to the most commonly used one - port 9100.
‘The printer tells me there is a paper jam error, but I can see no physical jam’, says the customer. This is also a simple fix, based on having the right setting in the printer driver.
As I explained above, the majority of label stock used by our clients has a gap to show where one label ends and another starts. However, some label stock has a black mark on the rear of the label to indicate the end of each label.
The Transmissive/Reflective setting tells the printer which of these two types of stock are being used. The setting is therefore under the ‘stock’ tab in the driver. For labels with gaps, use the transmissive setting and for black mark, use reflective.
Toshiba printers are some of the most reliable on the market, so I know when customers call up, it’s not likely to be a printer error but a configuration setting. Understanding the three settings above can sort out almost all issues our customers face.
