When you are finding to buy a name badge machine for the employees of your company or office, you might find yourself in a dilemma: Should you get a laminator machine or a plastic id badge generator? We will look into pros and cons of each machine here. After you've ended reading, you will have a better idea which direction to go in with your buy of a name badge production machine. The two basic buying options for name badge tool we'll look into are: Buying a laminator machine and buying a plastic card printer.
Buy a laminator machine
Magnetic Encoder Strip
This choice is probably more convenient for smaller offices and for itsybitsy budgets. The laminator machine is basically a gadget with two rollers that heat and compress the plastic pouches to seal them up. Prior to laminating, you insert the printed paper Id badge into the pouch and it becomes the laminated Id card. Uncomplicated and versatile. As you can see, the advantages of a laminator machine are: Uncomplicated to set up, Uncomplicated to use, and versatile as you can use it for other lamination purposes besides name badges.
Depending on how many name badge cards you need and how fast you need them, you will be able to elect from separate laminator machines. They will differ by the heat-up speed, which will rule how long you need to wait from the time you turn the machine on to the time when the machine is ready for operation. They will also differ by the laminating capacity, that is, how many laminates they can process per minute. Heavy duty laminator machines can control continuously, while with simpler machines you will have to wait in the middle of laminations.
Another great benefit of a laminating machine is the price. They can be had for nearby 0, depending on their speed and power.
Why buy a plastic card printer?
You can print name badges with a card printer too. As the name suggests, you are printing on plastic here, rather than on paper. There is no need for lamination to perform the same level of sturdiness and wrinkle resistance. However, the printer must be capable of printing directly on plastic. There are two kinds of plastic card printers: Printers that can print one time only, and rewritable card printers. Let's look at all your options for a type of a plastic name badge machine:
- Rewritable plastic card printers: The plastic cards for the rewritable card printers must be made of specially designed material that records and erases the print depending on the temperature.
- Magnetic strip encoder printers: Plastic card printers also have an choice to encode supplementary data on the magnetic strip on the back of the card, as well as encode a smart card or a touchless smart card that is embedded into the card. This makes plastic cards extremely usable for company gift cards, or for laborer name badges.
- Color coded plastic cards for quick optic inspection: Color coding the prints on badges can help protection personnel quickly distinguish in the middle of separate passage levels of the badge wearers.
- Magnetic strip for self-operating card detection: When the magnetic strip is encoded and entrances to structure are adequate with magnetic card readers, the name badges can contribute restricted passage to structure and rooms automatically, by simply swiping the card through the magnetic card reader.
- Touchless smart card encoding plastic card printers: When the modern, touchless smart card technology is employed, there is even no need for swiping the card. The wireless technology used by the touchless smart cards will allow the transportation in the middle of the card reader and the card over a enough distance, and enable passage whenever the appropriately encoded smart card is detected at a small distance.
Some of these are the kinds of uses for plastic card printers that could not be ended with a name badge laminator. Thus, if you need the features above, the plastic card printers have an definite benefit over the name badge laminators.
However, there is a cost disadvantage to plastic card printers. They start at about ,000 and up, depending on the above features and printing speed and capacity.
Name Badge engine - What Works Better, A Laminator engine Or A Plastic Card Printer?