Printer health, settings and profiles
Printer health, settings and profiles
See how worn each Zebra's printhead is and what maintenance it needs, change its settings from DataMagik, and copy the settings of a printer that prints well to the rest.
Open a Zebra printer in Printer Management and use its Health and Settings tabs. Both read from the printer itself through the site's connector, which must be version 1.5.0 or later.
Health
Each Zebra reports its health about every hour. Select Read now to read it straight away; the tab shows when it was Read.
| Reading | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Printhead wear | How far the printhead has printed against its rated life, for example "13% of rated life · 6.4 km printed of 50 km rated". |
| Labels printed | The printer's own label count. |
| Printed in total | The distance of media the printer has printed. |
| Since the head was cleaned | How far it has printed since the printhead was last cleaned. |
| Times the head was opened | How often the printhead has been opened, for example to load media. |
| Darkness, Print speed, Print mode | The settings it is printing with. |
| Running for | How long since it was switched on. |
| Labels per day, last 30 days | A chart of how much it prints. |
Maintenance due
The tab lists the maintenance the printer needs, or says No maintenance due:
- Clean the printhead: the printer's cleaning interval has passed.
- Printhead at N% of its rated life: from 90%, so a replacement can be ordered before print quality drops.
- Replace the printhead: the printer says the printhead is worn out.
- Calibrate the media: the printer asks for calibration.
- Labels nearly out: shown here as a reminder. It is a consumable rather than maintenance, so it does not raise a maintenance alarm or work request.
To have due maintenance open an incident in Asset Health, or to plan maintenance every so many labels, track the printer as equipment. See Printers as Shop Floor equipment.
Settings
The Settings tab reads the printer's settings live. Each setting shows its current value and what the printer allows (Allowed: 0.0-30.0, or a list of choices).
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Darkness | How dark it prints. |
| Print speed (in/s) | How fast it prints. |
| Print mode | Tear-off, peel-off, cutter, rewind and so on. |
| Media tracking | Gap, continuous or mark media. |
| Print method | Direct thermal or thermal transfer (with ribbon). |
| Print width (dots), Maximum label length (in) | The size of label it expects. |
| Label top, Left position, Tear-off position (dots) | Fine adjustment of where the label prints and tears. |
| When the head closes, When it powers up | Whether it feeds or calibrates. |
| Sleep when idle (Energy Star), Sleep after (seconds idle) | Whether the printer sleeps when idle, and after how long. The printer wakes when a label arrives. |
Changing settings
- Change one or more values.
- Select Apply N change(s).
- DataMagik writes them to the printer, reads them back, and reports each one: changed from what to what, already set, skipped and why (for example outside the printer's range), or not taken by the printer.
Select Read again to reload the values from the printer.
Changing settings needs a connector that allows changes to devices. A connector installed as a read-only build, or with OT writes switched off, reads settings but refuses to change them, and the error says so. Network settings (address, Wi-Fi, Weblink), the printer's name and identity, and one-off commands such as a reset are never changed from DataMagik, whatever is sent.
Printer profiles
A profile is a saved copy of a printer's settings that you can write to other printers. Use it to set up a new printer like the others on its line, or to put a printer back the way it was.
Saving a profile
- Open the printer that prints the way you want, and its Settings tab.
- Under Printer profiles, enter a name, for example "4x6 shipping labels".
- Select Save as profile. The profile lists the model it came from and how many settings it holds.
Network settings, the printer's name and its stored label formats are not copied into a profile.
Applying a profile
- In the printer list, tick up to 20 printers.
- Choose the profile under Apply profile… and select Apply, then confirm.
- The profile is written to each printer in turn, and the result is reported printer by printer: what changed, what was already set, and what was skipped because that printer does not have the setting or does not allow the value.
Delete a profile from the list under Printer profiles. Printers keep the settings they have.
Reading health from a script
connectors.getPrinterHealth(printer) returns the printer's last health report, including labelsPrinted, printheadWornPct, cleanDue, replacePrinthead and maintenanceDue. See Printing labels and documents.