User's Manual

Nordic ID PL3000 user manual, v. 2.6, October 2006 92

Print quality

One of the key element in successful decoding is the print quality. The better the print quality, the easier

the identiﬁ cation. When printing ID symbologies, there may appear small defects on the print. These

defects are usually printer related so, that different types of printers create different kinds of defects. The

printing method should be chosen so that the edges of the symbols should be well deﬁ ned. Their edges

should not be rough or fuzzy, so that the bars and spaces have the proper widths intended for the bar

code symbology used.

Also the printer resolution has to be considered when printing the codes. The printer must be able to

print the narrowest element, the x dimension, of the code. See table for printer resolution versus to the x

dimension.

Resolution (dpi) Dot size (mil) Narrowest printable element

sizes

200 5 10; 15; 20; 25; 30...

300 3,3 6.6; 10; 13.3; 16.6; 20...

400 2,5 5; 7.5; 10; 12,5; 15...

600 1,6 5; 6.6; 8.3; 10; 11,6...

#%,,

¬MIL

¬X¬¬MIL

^¬¬MM

Figure: DataMatrix (15 mil) ID symbology cell and code size (not in actual size)