Barcode Quality Problems with 203 DPI Printers (Zebra etc)

Barcode Quality Problems with 203 DPI Printers (Zebra etc)

You may encounter bar code quality problems when printing to a thermal transfer printer with 203 dpi

Adjusting the module width to the printer resolution is the standard solution for such problems. But with 203 dpi printers we have one particularity shown by the following example.

Three printer dots at 203 dpi correspond to 0,3753694581 mm. But the module width in the print control can be adjusted to 0.375 mm only (no more fractional digits can be specified). This approach leads to an aberration of 0.000369 mm per bar/space module in the symbol. This sounds like a very small error, but the errors add up and lead to an aberration of one or more printer dots when printing wider bar codes.

Solution

With the OptResolution flag the module width can be reduced to the next full pixel boundaries thus reducing the printing tolerance to a minimum.

• Edit the barcode.ini configuration file and adjust:

  [SETTINGS]
  ...
  DefOptResolution=1
  

• Adjust the module width in the Printcontrol slightly above three Pixels: M=376.

This way the Barcode DLL will calculate a "fallback" module width of 0,3753694581 mm (according to 203 dpi) thus avoiding the aberration mentioned above.