GoLabel II | Printer Setup
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Let’s recap:
- unpacked and plugged in your printer.
- Installed the GoLabel II Drivers and software
- About the Function Menu and the Main Toolbar
- Doing your artwork page setup
Next, let’s set up our printer, to print the ribbon we designed on the GoLabel II software.
When clicking on the printer setup icon on the main toolbar, the Printer Setup Menu is displayed.
On the Printer Setup menu, there are three tabs:
- Printer Setup
- Printer Interface
- Miscellaneous
The Printer Setup menu defaults to the Printer Setup tab upon opening.
Here we set our printing parameters according to the type of resin/wax we are using, the model of the printer we are using etc.
For this example, we are printing with a regular Thermal Transfer Resin, on a standard white satin ribbon.
Printer Model:
When first using the software, it will automatically default to the first machine on the list. Please make sure to set it to GE300. Failing to do this will result in the machine receiving the wrong data from the software and it won’t print correctly. Once this is done and you exit the software, it will automatically remember your previous setting when you open it again.
Resolution:
This setting is greyed-out and is set automatically according to the resolution of the GE300 printer, which is 203 dpi.
Darkness:
This setting indicates the heat used to print the resin/wax onto the satin ribbon.
Here is a guide:
- When printing with Wax, the ideal heat setting range is 6 – 10 (higher temperatures will fuse the wax onto the satin when it prints and tear the fragile wax film).
- Printing with resin requires a heat setting of between 8 to a maximum of 16 (higher temperatures will fuse the resin onto the satin when it prints and tear the fragile wax film).
- When printing with laundry safe resin it needs a high heat setting to ensure durability and should be set between 16 up to 19.
Speed:
Use a slow speed of 2 when doing your inital setup, and once everything is setup and ready to print, you can print with speeds up to 5, which requires the resin/wax and ribbon to be set up to handle speed.
Printing Mode:
There is two options for the printing mode:
Thermal Transfer mode: The mode we want to use,
Direct Thermal (it uses a chemical that turns black when passed through heat).
Tear off/Cut Position / Paper Direction / Draw Mode:
These three options are not applicable to printing on satin ribbon, and so we leave them in their default positions of 15, 0 and 0.
The last two check box options in this column is:
Save serial no before exit: will prompt you to save the artwork/label to a file before exiting.
Show OutRange alert message: When printing, if there are objects beyond the printable range of the label, an error message window will be displayed to ask whether you want to continue printing or not.
Now, let’s look at the right hand column, on the Printer Setup tab:
When we design artwork we design one repeat, plus the gap next to it. This makes it easy to print multiple repeat without worrying about the spacing and alignment.
To enable us to print multiple step and repeats of this artwork we select to print multiple copies per label. This will print multiple copies of the same artwork with the gap next to it, creating a step and repeat pattern.
Tip:
To check how many meters you want to print, take the total of one meter (1000mm) and divide the total length of your artwork length (e.g. 120mm), in our example the total is 8.33 – we get 8 x repeats per meter. So if I want to do 20 meters of this artwork I need to set my copies to 167 copies per label.
Because we print on a continuous satin ribbon, we don’t set the Number of Labels or the Labels per Cut option. Those pertain to paper or barcode labels.
The next tab we will look at is the Printer Interface Tab.
When your printer is plugged in to the USB port on your computer, the GoLabel software will automatically detect the port and populate the fields on this tab.
The last tab on the Printer setup screen is Miscellaneous
This screen is auto populated, the only items of interest is the buzzer : On/Off. this option will allow the printer to sound an alarm (audible) instead of just the flashing lights. It will not allow errors to print, but will just shut the audible alarm on or off.
Once you are happy with the setup, please click on the save option to Save this job for future printing or;
if you are ready to print this job, click on the Print option to proceed with printing.