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Chapter 4 RibbonMinder
Print Statistics
You can view various printer statistics, such as hours of usage, and refer to
these figures for preventive maintenance purposes. Printer statistics
accumulate continuously; they do not reset when you turn off the printer.
All of the printer statistics are set to zero at the factory after burn-in testing.
• On. The cumulative time in hours the printer has been powered on. The
range is from 0 to 30,000 hours.
• Print. The cumulative time in hours the printer has actually been printing.
The range is from 0 to 30,000 hours.
• Print Strokes. The cumulative number of back-and-forth shuttle strokes
the printer has printed during normal operation. The range is from 0 to
2,147,483,648 shuttle strokes.
• Print Lines. The cumulative number of lines the printer has printed. The
range is from 0 to 2,147,483,648 print lines.
• 11 inch Pages. The cumulative number of pages the printer has printed.
The range in print pages is from 0 to 2,147,483,648 total inches of paper
movement divided by 11.
RibbonMinder
RibbonMinder is a user-definable software feature which notifies the user
when a ribbon should be changed. It does this by monitoring ink consumption
and alerts you when the print quality falls below a level you designate. This is
especially important if you are printing bar codes to be scanned.
As printing continues, the percentage of usable ink in the ribbon decreases.
When 0% usable ink appears, the printer is typically configured to stop
printing and display the following message:
ON LINE 100%
<printer emulation>
ON LINE 74%
Ribbon ink being consumed
<printer emulation>
ON LINE 8%
Ribbon life approaching end
<printer emulation>
RIBBON INK OUT
CHANGE RIBBON