Plastic ID Card Printers

Plastic ID Card Printers - Buying Guide

Output Colour

The first choice to make when choosing a plastic card printer is what couours you want to be able to print on the blank plastic cards.

If you need to print full colour cards, you require a colour card printer. This is the case for ID cards where you require a colour photograph of someone to feature for identification, for example. It also would apply for membership cards where no photo is required but multiple colours need to e printed on the card.

The alternative to a colour card printer is a monochrome printer. These can only print in one colour (e.g. red logo and text on black blank plastic card) or shades of that colour (e.g. black text and a greyscale image on a blank white plastic card).

Print Capability

The next decision to make is whether you require a single-sided or dual-sided card printer. Dual-sided printers are ideal where you need to print large batches of plastic cards with print on both the front and reverse of the card in one pass.

Single-sided card printers do not have the in-built hardware to turn the card around for a second pass within the machine. You could print dual-sided plastic cards with a single-sided card printer but you would have to manually put the card through again which is always prone to mistakes and clearly takes a lot more time.

Annual Printing Volume

If you are only printing small volumes of plastic cards, you can go for a lower specified, cost-effective card printer. For plastic card volumes around 2000 cards per year or less a smaller 'value' desktop ID card printer will be more than suitable.

If you printing over 2000 plastic cards per year, we recommend you go for a more industrial 'performance' plastic card printer.

Lamination Capability

For secure, tamper-resistant card creation; you will require a card printer which can laminate the ID cards once they have been printed. Lamination makes the cards more durable and can be combined with various forms of security including holograms to ensure that they cannot be copied. Common examples of cards with this requirement include driving licenses and national ID cards.