Why Industrial Barcode Printers Need Printer Enclosures

By Author: Graham Gallagher
Total Articles: 3764
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Intermec are a world renowned manufacturer of industrial thermal printers, due to the high quality of the thermal printers, making them ideal for hostile areas, this is the reason why most food processing companies use them in processing areas.

Intermecs thermal printers are perfect when labels are required on demand in high production areas, the type of paper used makes the label almost fade proof. The quality will be constant from the first label to the 1,000 label. They are also more economical, since they only consume the paper.

Now the only problem is if you put a printer that is worth a few thousand pounds in a heavy dirt environment, you will soon find that certain parts on the printer fail and due to the extreme wet conditions, the manufacture will not cover the printer for repairs under the standard warranty. So you are left with an expensive printer that needs new parts, at your cost.

On the other hand, if you put an industrial printer in to a wash down area, such as in a food processing plant, the best option is to protect it with a protective printer enclosure, this eliminates the printer coming ...
... into contact with water, even the cable access is waterproof. No matter how industrial the printer is, if it comes into contact with fluid it will cause an electrical short and possibly electrocute the operator.

The other benefit of using printer enclosures is that the life of the printer is increased, as the enclosure keeps the printer in good order, making the return on investment much quicker.

Printer cabinets are manufactured from either stainless steel metal when the printers are going into wash down areas, otherwise a mild steel, powder coated enclosure would be ideal for warehousing or general manufacturing. The units come with a rollout shelf for ease of roll changes and maintenance.

Until one of the barcode printer manufacturers develops an affordable printer that is waterproof and dustproof, the only way to protect printers from hostile areas is to use printer enclosures.