The Hengstler C56 thermal receipt printer is the ideal printer for kiosk receipt printing while remaining hardy and vandal proof. It features an exceptional print speed of up to 220 mm/sec as well as a variable paper width of 58 – 60mm. A unique, patented tear bar assembly prevents vandals from pulling the paper out of the printer – instead the paper will simply tear off. The Hengstler C56 printer will pull a 10cm diameter paper roll from its integral paper tray to provide extended operation between refills.
In addition to typical printer commands, the C56 has some unique functions that gives the designer much greater control over the printer and flexibility in its application. Some of the commands are detailed below:
Print Speed Setting: The C56 has variable print speeds with two main mechanisms to set print speed; preset values and any value up to the maximum speed. Reducing print speed can lower average current consumption when using a limited capacity power supply or pulling a very large paper roll.
Printhead Heating Time Adjustment: The C56 allows the adjustment of the total heating time, which effects how dark the printout will be.
Dot History Pre-Burn: This feature allows the printer to be tuned to compensate for residual heat build-up in the thermal heating elements that make up the printhead. With this feature enabled the run time (or burn time) of the heating elements is broken into two parts; pre-burn phase and a main-burn phase. If an individual heating element has been burned while printing the previous dot row (therefore has some residual heat), it is not heated during the next pre-burn phase. All dots are required to form the dot line are fired during the main-burn phase as per normal. The benefit to this feature is that it provides a way to prevent the overheating of large, dark areas, which result in adjacent areas that should remain white being blackened due to excess heat.
Temperature Dependent Burn Time Corrections: This feature allows the administrator to specify a series of corrections based on ambient temperature as measured by the printer by adding burn time if it’s cold, or, shortening burn time if it’s warm. The result is consistent printout quality over the temperature range of the C56.
Multi-Strobe Burn Factor: Should the administrator need to limit current consumption this feature is the right tool to use. It allows each half of the printhead to burn separately, thereby consuming less current.
Customer Specific Part Number and Serial Number: A common problem for OEMs is keeping track of component modules, such as printers, that have been purchased elsewhere and installed in their equipment. The C56 makes this easy by allowing the OEM to insert their part number and serial number into the printer. Whenever a new paper roll is inserted this information will print out, making it easy to track the history of a component without worrying about the manufacturer’s part and serial numbers.
Compressed Graphics: While it’s rarely an issue with USB, serial printers are notorious for long print times when the printout is graphic heavy. The C56 addresses this problem by running very fast baud rates (115,200 baud), and also by allowing compressed graphics to be sent to the printer. This reduces the number of bytes sent to the printer to create a particular dot line, thereby increasing throughput and reducing or eliminating the serial bottleneck.
Rotation: The C56 allows rotation of text, images and barcodes.
Print Job Successful: By using the Parameter Transmission function at the end of a print job, the C56 will acknowledge whether the print job was successfully received.
Choosing the right ticket printer is an important part of designing a kiosk or terminal and JEA has many years experience in advising customers on how to achieve a successful printing solution. Please get in touch with us by heading over to the Contact Us page and give us a call or fill out the contact form.