Chapter 3: Printer Menus and the Control Panel 3–47
Operator Menu
⇒
Forms
RibnMon Thresh
This parameter sets the ribbon life threshold of the Ribbon Monitor feature.
The default option is 40, assuming that a 40 million character ribbon is being
used. This option should be changed to 60 or 250 if a 60 million or 250 million
character ribbon is used. The setting can be further refined based on the
application being printed.
Ribbon Monitor Operation
When the number of characters printed reaches the ribbon life threshold, the
current print job will stop, the Fault indicator will light, and the Replace Rib-
bon message will appear. When this situation occurs:
• Clear the fault with the Clear key. The fault indicator should turn off
and the Replace Ribbon message should disappear. (As explained
under RibbonMonitor, see above, the fault message may recur.)
• Look at the recently printed output of the printer to determine if the
ribbon is exhausted. If the quality of the output is still acceptable, you
can increase the ribbon life threshold through the RibnMon Thresh
option. The printer can then be placed back online and printing will
resume.
• If the printed output is too light, then the ribbon is exhausted. Replace
the ribbon with a new one, and reset the ribbon count with Clear Menu
Ribbon Count. The printer can then be placed back online and print-
ing will resume.
If the printing application is particularly heavy, it may be necessary to decrease the
threshold.
The current Ribbon Monitor status can be obtained by printing a Calibrations
Report (Menu => Configuration Menu => Printer => Report). This report will
indicate whether Ribbon Monitor is enabled, the estimated number of charac-
ters printed since Ribbon Monitor was last reset, and the selected threshold.
If the LAN interface is installed, the Ribbon Monitor status can be viewed
graphically in WebPanel in which the size of the gas gauge bar decreases as a
percentage of remaining expected ribbon life. The color of the bar is green
when expected remaining ribbon life is between 51% and 100%, yellow when
between 26% and 50%, and red when 25% or less. WebPanel can also be
configured to send an Email Notification when the expected remaining ribbon
life falls to 25%.
If the Ribbon Monitor Fault occurs, and is cleared without the ribbon life
threshold being increased or the ribbon count reset to zero, the “Replace
Ribbon” message will reappear approximately every one million characters until
one of these operations is performed. This message will also appear upon
powerup if the ribbon count is above the threshold at that time.