Can I print on a plastic card? The Answer is Yes. Plastic card, as you know, is a highly customized product that can be used in many area. Every person, company or orgnization has their own requirements for plastic card.
If the quantity is large, normally start from 500pcs, you can find a card supplier or manufacturer to print all the cards directly. Card supplier usually use the huge professional CMYK offset printer to print the plastic card. This is the easiest method to print the plastic card, meanwhile, the printing effect is the best.
But sometimes, you just need a few cards, sometimes you can’t collect the printing information one time. Then how to print a plastic card by yourself? Here are two popular solutions.
A. Print plastic cards using an inkjet printer.
Tools Required: Inkjet printer, card tray, inkjet white PVC card
First of all, you need a inkjet printer, such as Cannon, Epson inkjet printer. Then prepare a card tray. Different printer model, the card tray are different. Once you have an Inkjet PVC Card Tray, you can print on Inkjet PVC Cards. Inkjet PVC cards have a special coating applied to them that allow them to absorb the ink from your inkjet printer. If you were to try printing on a normal PVC card that does not have this coating applied you’d see that the ink would pool up and not be absorbed in to the card.
B. Print plastic cards using a thermal printer.
Tools Required: Thermal printer, ribbon, PVC card
Thermal printers also known as dye–sublimation printers prints image on a surface using a heated printhead. The common thermal printers are HID, Zebra ID card printer etc. The most important part of the equipment is the ribbon stored within the printer. Within the ribbon, there are several color panels (namely black, clear, yellow, magenta and cyan). Any combination of these panels can be used to create every color across the spectrum. The color panels are heated as required by the portable printer head.
