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XF
eXtendo®
Thermal Printer Family
6 Low Current Operation
There are numerous factors that affect thermal printer current. It is possible to manipulate these factors
consciously to reduce current draw for situations where this is important, such as operating from batteries.
If battery operation only occurs when power has failed, the host software can be programmed to print at a
faster, higher current rate during normal operation and then switch the eXtendo® XF to a lower current
mode when the system switches to battery operation. The following are some considerations to aid in
reducing current draw.
For all items described in the following, please refer to the eXtendo® XF Emulation Command Set
Reference D 684 112 or the eXtendo® Configuration tool for a comprehensive view.
6.1 Print Speed
With thermal printers, average current is about proportional to print speed. Since the burn time for
each dot row is fixed, when printing slower there is more pause between burns and therefore a
lower average current. The target print speed can be set via command or the configuration. The
slower this print speed is, the lower the current draw will be. Note that when printing via the
eXtendo® Windows driver, print speed and density settings come from the settings of the driver (see
under "Devices and Printers") and overrule the printer internal settings.
6.2 Graphics/Bar Codes
Printing graphics typically consumes more current than printing only text. Text-only printing is
considered to have ~15% dots coverage on average, while graphic or barcode printing may go up to
50%, consuming 2x to 4x the average current.
6.3 Inverse Printing
Inverse text printing should be avoided when current matters, since everything that's normally
black becomes white, and vice-versa, is drawing (in average text) about 6 to 8 times the current and
is therefore comparable to full-black printing.
6.4 Print Density Adjustment
Increasing print density can improve print quality / blackness, but at the same time will increase
current draw. Therefore, Print Density is always a trade-off between these two characteristics. Use
the lowest print density that is visually acceptable to minimize current draw.
Note: increasing the print density can adversely affect the print heads' life.
6.5 Dot History Factor
The eXtendo® printers offer a feature to improve the sharpness of printouts, e.g., when printing long
barcode sequences of for documents containing small text.
Dot history monitors previously burned dots and reheats them for a shorter time to prevent
blooming and excessively black areas, thereby decreasing total current consumption. But it also
increases the burn time for "new" dots in a row.
When using dot history, it is recommended to increase the density setting by 50...70% of the dot
history factor. help reduce average current draw but primarily increases print image sharpness.
Note: the effect of dot history settings depends on the quality of the used thermal paper.
Part No. D-684-399
Mod. No. 4 120322 Eli
page 28 of 35
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