Thermal Ribbon Printers

Dye Diffusion Printers are thermal printers that utilize dyes, resins and metallics coated directly onto a ribbon. Each minute pixel in a thermal head then transfers the dye or resin, either directly onto the substrate or through the use of a retransfer process directly onto the substrate. Some advantages with Dye Diffusion printers are high resolution and consistent color reproduction,

high-output production speed and the option of utilizing substrate selections that include many different standard thermo plastics.When using the full-color ribbon application, this process also puts down a clear over-laminate as part of the printing process. This greatly enhances the durability of this product and offers some limited UV resistance as well.

This process also allows for monochrome spot color printing resulting in cost benefits and speed. These include a variety of colors as well as the important white and metallic images. Some drawbacks of this technology would be a higher capital cost of equipment, limited size of output capability, slightly higher printing costs (full-color only) and substrate options that are limited to flat sheet stock only.