Dai Nippon Printing Co., Ltd. (DNP) is pleased to announce the April launch of the CX-D80H card printer, capable of outputting high-resolution prints of 600 dots per inch (dpi).

[Developmental Background]

Card printers are frequently used with portrait prints for company ID cards. And demand for such printing on cards has increased in line with the shift of ID certificates and certificates of qualification from paper to plastic cards. Apart from personal information, such as full name and a portrait photograph, it is also necessary for cards that certify ID and qualification to display ID, qualification categories and instructions. Such category notifications and instructions are displayed in 6 point type (approximately 2mm in height). With currently used card printers, however, print resolution is a low 300dpi, presenting the risk of low visibility for such small text. Because of this, it has frequently been the case to date that cards have been pre-printed with small text at printing factories, with personal information added later using card printer. The effort going into this process has become a challenge.

In order to surmount this challenge, DNP has developed a 600dpi card printer capable of high-resolution prints. Apart from printing ID and qualification categories in small print, it is also possible to include detailed data such as contact information. It is possible to achieve all this with just a single card printer, removing the need to use cards that display pre-printed small text. The use of the single card printer also helps reduce card manufacturing costs, while inventory control burdens can also be reduced by precluding the need to manage multiple types of pre-printed card. And given the 600dpi high-resolution features of the new card printer, it is also possible to achieve even clearer, high level color expressions.

[CX-D80H Features]

Printing resolution and printing speed have been improved compared to the existing model CX-D80.

• Printing resolution:

600 dpi, capable of clearer high-resolution prints compared to the CX-D80 at 300dpi.

• Printing speed:

31  Seconds per side of card compared to the CX-D80 at 40 seconds per side.

[Other Major Specifications]

Printing format	Dye-sublimation retransfer format1
Print area	Full face (both sides)
Gradation	256 levels for Yellow, Magenta, Cyan and 2 levels for Black
Housing size	343 (breadth) X 322 (dsepth) X 335 (height) (Stacker not included)
Weight	Standard 12.5kg
Maximum load	100 pieces
Energy consumption	AC 100V-120V 3A
Applicable cards	PVC, PET-G, heat resistant PET-G etc.
Contact IC encoding	DNP Standard-9, JavaCard, MULTOS etc.
Contactless IC encoding	FeliCa, FeliCa Lite-S, MIFARE, MIFARE UL, Type-B etc.
Others	Magnetic stripe encoding

[Pricing]

Open pricing. The reference price is approximately 1.0 million yen per set (on a pre-tax basis).

· Computers, application software and expendables such as ink ribbons, and maintenance will be charged separately.

[Looking Ahead]

DNP will market the CX-D80H to qualification organizations, schools and companies, and along with related products, such as cards, aims for sales of 1.0 billion yen in FY 2015.

 

¹ Dye-Sublimation retransfer printing: A format that does not directly print on to a card, but transfers an image pre-printed on transparent transfer film to a card. Borderless printing is performed on the full face of the card, facilitating clear prints on IC cards with bumps. This print format is capable of expressing a total of 16.77 million colors including 256 level gradation for Yellow, Magenta and Cyan, and 2 for Black.

 

* Product prices, specification and service contents mentioned in this news release are current as of the date of publication. They may be changed at any time without notice.