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Printer Pooling
Installation Guide 60
— The printer pool will identify a USB-connected printer as “available” even when the
printer status is Suspended or Not Responding if the printer is powered on. Power off
a USB-connected printer to remove it from the pool or suspend printing using Print
Manager.
— A network printer will not be identified as “not responding” until one card is sent and
not accepted by the printer. Suspend the printer in Print Manager.
— If the Printer Toolbox for a printer is in Advanced Setup, the printer is not available.
— If you need to use a printer separately from the printer pool, install it on another PC
or contact your service provider for assistance in removing it from the pool.
• Some applications track card completion status, and this data is available for cards sent
to the printer pool. The application can query the printer pool and obtain status for all
cards processed through the pool. Card completion status does not indicate which
printer actually printed the job.
• In the Printing Preferences dialog box for the printer pool, select the printer type, the
ribbon type, the Apply material setting for laminating printers, and other settings that
apply to all cards.
• For magnetic stripe encoding, use the same coercivity and magnetic stripe format values
for all printers and the printer pool. (If you select "Use printer settings," make sure the
settings in the printers are the same; use Diagnostics for Card Printers to view magnetic
stripe values if needed.)
Using a Printer Pool
To use a printer pool:
1 Make sure that all printers you want to receive card data and print cards have the same
type of supplies loaded and the same settings.
2 Make sure that the printer pool settings match the printer settings.
— For example, if you print color and encode magnetic stripe, load YMCKT ribbon in
the printers and use high-coercivity magnetic stripe cards. Each printer identifies the
ribbon type as YMCKT, but the pool cannot identify the Print Ribbon Type so you
must set the Print Ribbon Type.
3 Make sure the printers are powered on and ready.
4 In the application used to print cards, select the name assigned to the printer pool when
it was installed, such as Card Printer Pool.
5 Select Print in the application. The application sends the cards to the printer pool, which
randomly distributes the card jobs among the available card printers. When all printers
are busy, the printer pool keeps the card jobs in a queue until the next printer is not busy.
It will send the next card job as soon as any printer in the pool is available.
A printer is available if:
— The number of jobs active in the printer is less than the number of jobs supported for
that printer type.
— No jobs are pending in the Windows spooler for that printer.
— The printer is not paused in Windows Print Manager.
— The printer is not set to "work offline" in Windows Print Manager
— The printer status displayed in Windows Print Manager is not "User Intervention
Required."
— The Printer Toolbox is not in Advanced Setup mode.