Printer Pooling
—The printer pool will identify a
—A network printer will not be identified as “not responding” until one card is sent and not accepted by the printer. Suspend the printer in Print Manager.
—If the Printer Toolbox for a printer is in Advanced Setup, the printer is not available.
—If you need to use a printer separately from the printer pool, install it on another PC or contact your service provider for assistance in removing it from the pool.
•Some applications track card completion status, and this data is available for cards sent to the printer pool. The application can query the printer pool and obtain status for all cards processed through the pool. Card completion status does not indicate which printer actually printed the job.
•In the Printing Preferences dialog box for the printer pool, select the printer type, the ribbon type, the Apply material setting for laminating printers, and other settings that apply to all cards.
•For magnetic stripe encoding, use the same coercivity and magnetic stripe format values for all printers and the printer pool. (If you select "Use printer settings," make sure the settings in the printers are the same; use Diagnostics for Card Printers to view magnetic stripe values if needed.)
Using a Printer Pool
To use a printer pool:
1Make sure that all printers you want to receive card data and print cards have the same type of supplies loaded and the same settings.
2Make sure that the printer pool settings match the printer settings.
—For example, if you print color and encode magnetic stripe, load YMCKT ribbon in the printers and use
3Make sure the printers are powered on and ready.
4In the application used to print cards, select the name assigned to the printer pool when it was installed, such as Card Printer Pool.
5Select Print in the application. The application sends the cards to the printer pool, which randomly distributes the card jobs among the available card printers. When all printers are busy, the printer pool keeps the card jobs in a queue until the next printer is not busy. It will send the next card job as soon as any printer in the pool is available.
A printer is available if:
—The number of jobs active in the printer is less than the number of jobs supported for that printer type.
—No jobs are pending in the Windows spooler for that printer.
—The printer is not paused in Windows Print Manager.
—The printer is not set to "work offline" in Windows Print Manager
—The printer status displayed in Windows Print Manager is not "User Intervention Required."
—The Printer Toolbox is not in Advanced Setup mode.
Installation Guide | 60 |