ID Card Printer Discontinued? What to Do Next

Industry Update

Discontinued does not mean dead. It starts a clock, and how much time you have depends on supplies and parts rather than on the printer itself. Here is what to establish, in order.

What discontinuation actually means

Manufacturers retire a printer in stages. Sales of the unit stop first. Consumables carry on for a period after that. Spare parts and service carry on for a further period. Driver and firmware updates usually stop earliest, which matters the first time IT upgrades the operating system.

Check supplies before anything else

A printer with no ribbon is scrap regardless of its condition. Find out whether your ribbon is still in production and whether a replacement part number supersedes it. Supersessions are common and are not always announced loudly. We covered one when HID Fargo discontinued a DTC ribbon line and published next generation replacements.

If a ribbon is genuinely ending, a last time buy is reasonable. Bear in mind ribbons are a consumable with a shelf life and storage conditions, so buying five years of stock is not the same as buying five years of use.

Then check the wear parts

The printhead decides whether a printer is repairable. If replacement heads are still available, such as the Evolis S10000 for Pebble, Dualys and Quantum, an older machine can keep running for years. If they are not, the next printhead failure ends the printer.

Cleaning supplies matter for the same reason. They usually stay available longer than ribbons, and keeping the machine clean is the cheapest way to delay the failure that forces your hand.

Run it out, or migrate

Run it out when supplies are available, printheads are available, the driver works on your current operating system, and your annual volume is low enough that the machine will outlast the stock.

Migrate when any one of those fails, and especially when the driver stops working on supported operating systems. That failure arrives without warning, usually during an IT upgrade you did not control.

If you are migrating, the decision is mostly about matching your encoding, your card type and your volume rather than matching the old model feature for feature. Our write up of Zebra winding down its card printer line works through replacement options for that specific case.

Before you replace anything

• Confirm your encoding. Magnetic stripe, contact chip and contactless are separate options, and not every replacement includes yours.
• Check single or dual sided. Buying single sided to replace a dual sided printer is an expensive way to learn the difference.
• Export your templates and photo library first. Template files are often tied to the old software.
• Keep the old printer until the new one has printed a real badge that a real reader accepts.