Many of the ID card printers available on the market are not field upgradeable and if you need extra features down the road, you will have to think about that before making your purchase to avoid buying a new ID card printer later. There are some ID card printer manufacturers who offer field upgrades to their printer models and these upgrades allow adding more features to the printer so that it can satisfy the growing needs of the business. Some of the field upgrade features available for ID card printers are discussed below.

Dual Sided Printing Upgrade 

This is one of the most common upgrades available in ID card printer models like Evolis, Magicard, and Fargo printers. In Magicard Rio Pro and Enduro models, you can have this feature with a ribbon kit that you drop in. Once the ribbon kit is inside the printer, you will be able to print on both sides of an ID card with the printer. Evolis Primacy also offers the dual-sided printing upgrade option. This can be done with the help of a simple key that you insert and then remove. After that, you can choose dual-sided printing from the drivers and the printer will be ready to print on both sides of an ID card.

Almost all the Fargo printers offer the dual-sided printing field upgrade option. To upgrade a Fargo printer (except the DTC1250e), you need to add a module to the printer. The installation instructions are provided with the module and you will be able to do it easily.

Encoding Options

Adding encoding is the second most common field upgrade. Encoding can be for RFID cards, magnetic stripe cards, or contact chip cards. This type of field upgrade is provided by Evolis and Fargo printers. Evolis offers many different types of encoders that can be added to Zenius Expert as well as Primacy. The Zenius Expert from Evolis is a single-sided printer that cannot be upgraded to dual-sided printing, but you can add different encoder options to the printer. These upgrades are relatively easy to install and you just need to connect a few wires and put in some screws.  

Fargo printers also offer various encoder options that can be easily added to the printers in the field. This upgrade is available to the complete line of Fargo printers. It is very easy to add the encoder to the Fargo printer as it is usually a chip that you pop into the printer.