Zebra Printer Prints Too Dark

Possible Causes:

• Zebra Printer Darkness Adjustment 

• Zebra Printer Pressure Adjustment

• Zebra Printer Print Speed

• Zebra Printer Label and Ribbon combination

• Label Software Darkness settings

• Zebra Printer Print head Position

When a Zebra printer prints too dark, the print head probably had too much time against the material with too much energy.   The amount of heat (energy) applied to the material is related to the temperature of the print head, the pressure applied to the print head, and the amount of time the material is under the head. (print speed)

Zebra Printer Darkness Adjustment 

The Zebra printer darkness setting effects the amount of energy, and heat applied to the label when momentarily under the row of print head elements. If your image is too dark the darkness setting in the Zebra printer is always a good place to start. If you have label software adjust the heat or darkness setting in the printing software. Too much heat will cut the ribbon (like a heat knife). Too little heat and your barcodes will have breaks in them. 

Zebra Printer Pressure Adjustment

The Zebra printer Pressure adjustment is one of the more flexible features on a Zebra printer. The position of the pressure feet and the degree of pressure applied can have a crucial effect on the darkness of the printed image. (especially on applications using resin ribbons). Too much pressure will prematurely wear your print head to the point where it may need replacement. Certain label and ribbon combinations require more pressure than others. Generally Wax ribbon with paper labels requires the least pressure and resin ribbon with Gloss synthetic labels requires the most pressure and also results in the most durable image. Make all attempts possible to decrease the amount of pressure on the print head. We usually recommend cleaning the printer thoroughly  to allow the printer to attain adequate darkness without increasing pressure. 

Zebra Printer Print Speed

One way to make a barcode look lighter is to increase the print speed. Since the material is speeding under the printhead faster...it has less time to heat the material resulting in a lighter image.

Zebra Printer Label and Ribbon combination

Some ribbons will actually require less heat to create an image compared to others. If you are switching ribbon suppliers you may need to simply decrease the amount of darkness in the label software and things could improve.

Label Software Darkness settings

The major brands of Label Software on the market today allow you to control the darkness within the label design format. In fact, you can save the darkness setting appropriate to each label that you print individually. This is powerful because if you have various material combinations that you use throughout the day you would have keep playing with the printer adjustments all day long. Today with label software the darkness can be set once. If you are trying to adjust the darkness at the printer...most labeling software that is Windows-based is probably overriding your setting. If you are sending code down from a remote host then you can send the setting with the data in ZPL (Zebra Printer Language).

Zebra Printer Print head Position

Most of the Zebra printers created in the last 5 years do not allow a front-to-back type of print head adjustment but many of the Xi series printers can have their printhead too far back or too far forward. This problem is rare and would only happen if a tech person was in places where he/she should not be.