You can certainly outsource custom plastic card printing to offline or online custom printing services. For instance, you could just design your plastic custom business cards online and have customized business cards shipped to you.

However, there are multiple reasons why you would want to have your plastic cards printed in house. Examples include encoding sensitive information into the magnetic stripe or into the smart card insert. Or, you are generating custom plastic cards one at the time as your members are joining up. You would want them to get your cards right away.

Printing your plastic cards in house does provide the speed and security. What does it take to print custom plastic cards in house? First, you need to decide on what features and the custom plastic card design that you want. Then, match the following components to the features: Input of card content, Management of content, and Card printing.

Getting the data together

The plastic card data consists of textual, visual, and electronically encoded information. The textual information to be printed on plastic cards will normally be stored on a computer in a local database. The image information such as photo of the card holder, their signature, and possibly retinal scan and fingerprint is obtained through digital cameras, and fingerprint and retinal scanners and placed in the database as well.

The software that enables input of textual, image information usually comes included with plastic card printer but can also be purchased separately.

Within the same software there are provisions for importing logos and other design information that will determine the look of your custom plastic cards.

Managing the cardholder information

Local computer database that includes the cardholder information is usually sufficient. In larger organizations, the data can be pulled from non-local databases over the internet as well. Before printing, the images have to be corrected for contrast, and centered. Card previews are done in software as well.

Finally, plastic card printing

Majority of plastic card printers operate on the dye-sublimation principle; this means that the dye must first be heated and evaporated before it hits the plastic card surface, and solidifies. The color is delivered on plastic multi-color color sheets that reside on a plastic card ribbon. The blank plastic cards, and the color ribbon are the main supplies for any plastic card printer. The blank plastic cards come in a few colors, and can have magnetic stripes, or smart cards built in, depending on the use.

We will explore the membership cards printers, gift card printers, custom business card printing and plastic business cards printers next.