Kiosk Printing Heads in a New Direction

Kiosks are fast becoming one of the most popular ways to service the public’s needs effectively whilst saving time and money on staff. In addition to this, unattended kiosks or kiosks that need minimal supervision are being seen as the way forward for many integrators wanting to minimise maintenance and running costs. When thinking about ‘printers’ in the context of kiosks, most people would immediately think of tickets, receipts or vouchers as the obvious output, but recent innovations are heading in a new direction - towards card printing.

Teaming a card printer up in a kiosk alongside a touchscreen, magnetic encoding module or digital camera opens up huge potential in retail, facilities management and vending environments, and that’s just for starters. Printing loyalty and gift cards on demand in a retail environment fits ideally with the time saving and self service ethos of the kiosk, providing encoded gift cards that are ready to spend or loyalty cards that are ready to earn points in store for new customers.

Combining a kiosk card printer with card design software can allow the production of cards with photos, signatures, even fingerprint scans for use in a visitor management environment. The applications for a kiosk which prints cards are many and varied – cashless payment / vending systems being another ideal use for a kiosk placed in an office, gym, leisure centre or staff canteen.

A unique, high quality kiosk card printer has been developed by DED specifically for these markets, capable of printing one off individually designed cards or several of the same design if required. Based on the highly successful P330i plastic card printer from Zebra, the D330i has been adapted to hold up to 400 cards (0.76mm) allowing for minimal maintenance and supervision.

Currently working with several companies on integration of the D330i into kiosks for various markets, Elliot Davis, Sales Manager at DED commented “we’re very excited to be bringing such a unique product to the market and look forward to all the opportunities this innovative product presents.”

The D330i is available from DED Limited. Featuring a standard USB interface and Ethernet option, the D330i is capable of printing cards of between 0.25mm and 1.00mm thick. Print speed for a full colour, edge to edge, card is less than 25 seconds and for monochrome card is just 4 seconds. The D330i also features an adjustable card low sensor which can be used to monitor the level of remaining cards in the hopper. A range of card encoding options are available including a three track magnetic stripe encoder, contact smart card station and a contactless (Proximity) card encoder.