User's Manual

XPS Card Printer Guide
Printer Guide
About the Printer
Using the Printer
Card Design and Setup
Card
Components
Color Printing
Monochrome
Printing
Topcoat Printing
Magnetic Stripe
Printing & Non-
printing Areas
Layout
Settings
Printer Driver
Printing Cards
Troubleshooting
Supplies and Parts
Installation Guide
Magnetic Stripe
This section describes:
About Magnetic Stripe
Magnetic Stripe Escapes
Using Magnetic Stripe Escapes
About Magnetic Stripe
Magnetic stripe is an option available in the printer. See the Printer Status page of Properties for
the printer to see if your printer has a magnetic stripe option.
The cards you use must also have a magnetic stripe. The magnetic
stripe is a brown or black stripe close to one long edge of the card.
See the package containing new cards for details about the
magnetic stripe.
The magnetic stripe option is set up to define the coercivity, number
of tracks, and data format. The coercivity and data format are set in
the printer. The installer sets these values and they remain the same
for all cards printed using the same design.
The data format determines how many characters can be encoded
on a track. It also determines which characters can be encoded.
Click
here to see the characters available with the default ISO three-
track format.
Click
here to see the characters available with the JIS single-track
format.
Your cards can use the default format for each track, or can use a different combination of tracks
and data formats.
Magnetic Stripe Escape Codes
The data to encode on a magnetic stripe is entered as text and can look like data to print. The
XPS Card Printer Driver uses special characters called Escape Codes to identify data to encode.
Data within escape codes is not printed. The driver supports several Escape Code systems to
allow easy compatibility with other card printers.
The Escape Code defines the track for the data. The printer is set to use the format for each
track and you must enter the type of data the format requires. The table below shows the default
ISO format data, and how the data looks when formatted. The syntax column shows the general
statement for how the data must be provided. For each track there is an example of how the
data looks.
XPS Card Printer Guide
DRAFT
2/22
Datacard Confidential
Page 43
SHORT TERM CONFIDENTIAL