Color Dye
Sublimation Color imaging involves three passes of cards
undera print head. Yellow, magenta, and cyan
dyesdiffuse from corresponding ribbon panels
onto the cards in measured quantities for each
dotof a 300 dpi matrix. Each ribbon panel can
produce 32 dye densities on a dot-by-dot ba-
sis. Therefore, the range of colors for each dot
is 32.7K.
Gray-Scale Dye
Sublimation Gray scale imaging involves a single pass of
cards under the print head. Measured quanti-
ties of black dye diffuse from the ribbon onto
the cards on a dot-by-dot basis. Each card dot
can have 32 different densities.
Resin Thermal
Transfer Monochrome ribbons and the monochrome
panelsof multiple-panel ribbons produce solid
imaging by transferring a very durable resin
material onto cards. Resin either transfers or
not on a dot-by-dot basis. Unlike dye sublima-
tion,no in-between conditions exist to produce
a gray scale within each dot. Particularly Bar
Codes,but also Text,Lines, andRectangles of-
ten get composed using solid images. Also
Thermal Transfer ribbons come in a variety of
colors other than black. However, bar code
readers need black bar codes.
Overlay Varnish
Thermal Transfer Ribbons with Dye Sublimation panel(s) typi-
cally also have an Overlay Varnish Thermal
Transfer panel. These include YMCKrO,
YMCKrOKr, and KsO ribbons. Both color and
gray-scaledyes fade with exposure to ultravio-
letradiation. A coating of overlay varnish gives
images a much longer life. Notably, only dye
sublimation images require this protection.
Resin images hold their color without the pro-
tection of overlay varnish. P500 Overlaminate
ribbons with die-cut patches or transfer mate-
34 980179-001Rev. A
Operation