When using ID card printers, you can experience many issues and some of them can be easily fixed if you know what to do. Our expert technicians share some common ID card printer issues and tips to fix them.
Broken Printer Ribbons
Broken printer ribbons can happen due to many reasons. When you find that the ribbon of your ID card printer is broken, you can fix it using clear tape. You can then advance the taped part of the ribbon to the take-up spooler. If that does not seem to fix the issue, you may attempt the below steps.
- Check to see if the ribbon is properly inserted.
- Confirm that you are having the latest version of the ID card software.
- Perform a regular printer cleaning.
- Make sure that a proper power supply is used. Do not plug in your ID card printer to a surge protector.
Fixing White Lines Across ID Cards
Usually, white lines on printed ID cards indicate a blown pixel. If you find white lines on printed ID cards, it is recommended to perform a printer cleaning. After cleaning the printer, rotate the ID card 180 degrees to find if the white line follows the ID card or if it follows the image.
ID Printer Not Printing
There can be many reasons for your ID card printer to not print. Some of the most common ones are:
- Pending Cards To Be Printed In The Queue: Delete the pending cards to be printed. To do this, go to “Devices and Printers” located under the “Control Panel” option and right-click on the printer icon. From the drop-down menu, choose “See what is printing” and delete all the pending jobs. After that, open “Services” and find “Print Spooler”, right-click on it and select “Stop.” Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS and delete the files present in this folder. You can then go to “Services/Print Spooler”, right click and choose “Start.”
- Printer Shown Grayed Out: If you find that the ID card printer is shown grayed out under devices and printers, you can unplug the USB cable of the printer and then plug it back in. Hopefully, that will fix the problems. However, if the issue persists, you will have to reinstall the printer drivers and the ID card software.
After doing the above steps, you can try printing a test card to find out if the issue is resolved.
