Thermal Transfer Printers

A print is made by placing thermal transfer ribbon between a heated printhead and the product to be marked. The heat passes through the ribbon, releasing the ink, which adheres to the substrate, cooling rapidly, resulting in a permanent print.

Thermal Transfer overprinting (TTO) coders are suitable for printing high quality variable data, barcodes and images onto packaging material, for a wide range of manufacturing applications, across various industry sectors.

Compared to traditional contact coders such as hot-stamp or roller coders, thermal transfer overprinting offers superior print quality and lower costs.

From label overprinting, to high speed digital coding on vertical bagging machines with flexible packaging, the thermal transfer printer range is able to deliver fast print speeds, minimising downtime and ensuring the lowest possible cost of ownership.

Key Features and Benefits

Perfect for product identification of Tyvek® medical pouches.
First-class print quality of text, barcodes and graphics.
Choice of font styles and sizes at the touch of a button.
Large print area, allowing pack coding and marking in the same operation.
Prints on a wide variety of packaging materials.
Clean technology that can be used in all production environments.

How the Thermal Transfer Printers work

The printer uses a fixed width thermal printhead to apply ink on to flexible packaging. This is achieved by contact between the printhead and a platen or roller.

Sandwiched between the printhead and the label is a very thin thermal transfer ribbon made of a polyester film which is coated on the label side with a wax, wax-resin or pure resin ink.

The ribbon is spooled onto reels up 1200m long and is driven through the printing mechanism in sync with the labels, at speeds of up 1000mm per second.