Printing a thermal label

[Guest]

I have to print a Fedex shipping label on a Zebra(thermal) printer. I
initially had the label information in a base64 string which I decoded into a
memory stream. Now I need to send this memory stream to a thermal/label
printer. How do I do this?

Thanks for any help.

 

[John Timney \( MVP \)]

I dont have answer for you, but this might help you work one out

http://aspalliance.com/462#Page1

 

[Matt]

There are actually a couple of different methods for doing this but it depends on your situation and the dollars you want to spend.

The cheapest method is to write out the label in the printers native language which for the Zebra printer it's ZPL. Unfortunately Zebra seems to change their printer language between models and revisions in models so this can sometimes become difficult as you will possible have different formats for each printer and you need to know which you are talking to. Just as a comparison Intermec uses the same language for all models and is backward compatible for all models.

If you go this route you will need to set your printer to use the Generic/Text Windows printer driver and then just push the stream of ZPL, which is just text, to the printer as you would any other print request. I open a new window with the font the same color as the background so the user does not see the ZPL and give them a print button which just opens the printer dialog to send the format to. Any other driver just interprets the ZPL language as text to be printed and will not engage the Zebra printer engine in the bar code printer hardwrare.

The other method is to create a PDF which can include bar code fonts for printing. This will require you to use the specified Zebra printer driver for Windows but allows you to create one format that works everywhere. This process will require you to purchase a bar code font package, which is unfortunate since the Zebra is built for this, and a PDF creation package. Basically this route nulls the point of using a specialty bar code printer since it is just connected to your workstation as any other laser.

HTH,

Matt

I have to print a Fedex shipping label on a Zebra(thermal) printer. I
initially had the label information in a base64 string which I decoded into a
memory stream. Now I need to send this memory stream to a thermal/label
printer. How do I do this?

Thanks for any help.