ID Card Printer Troubleshooting: Common Problems & Fixes

Most card printer faults are not faults. They are dirt, the wrong consumable, or a driver that has lost its way, and they are fixable in a few minutes by somebody with no special training.

This page works through the problems we actually get called about, roughly in the order they occur. Start at the top even if your symptom is further down, because the first section resolves more calls than everything below it combined.

Before anything else, clean the printer

If we could give one piece of advice about card printers it would be this. Cleaning resolves the clear majority of print quality complaints, and a surprising number of feed problems too.

Card printers pull dust, card debris and airborne particulate through the print path continuously. It collects on the cleaning roller, the feed rollers and the printhead. The result is a gradual decline that nobody notices day to day, then a card that is obviously wrong.

Run a cleaning card through the printer following the manufacturer's procedure, replace the cleaning roller if your model has a replaceable one, and clean the printhead with an alcohol swab if the manufacturer's process calls for it. Then print a test card.

Do this with every ribbon change as standard practice. Most manufacturers specify exactly that, and Evolis goes further: it treats the printhead warranty as invalid after 1,200 cards without a regular clean. Cleaning kits are listed with their contents and recommended interval in our ribbon and supply range.

Prints are faded, washed out or streaky

Clean first. If it persists after a proper clean, work through these.

Check the print settings. Many drivers have a density or intensity setting that somebody may have reduced. It is also possible the job is being sent in a monochrome or draft mode.

Check the ribbon is seated correctly and that it is the right ribbon for the printer. A ribbon that fits physically but is not the specified part can produce poor results.

Consider the card stock. Dye sublimation needs a card surface designed for it. Cheap or non-graphics-quality cards absorb dye unevenly, and the symptom looks exactly like a printer problem. If the fade started when you changed card supplier, that is your answer.

Consider storage. A ribbon that has been in a hot store room or a damp basement will not print as well as one kept in an office. Evolis specifies storage between 10 and 30 degrees Celsius at 30 to 80 percent humidity.

If it survives all of that, the printhead may be worn. Printheads are consumable in the long run and they degrade with card passes.

A line runs through every card in the same place

This is the most diagnostic symptom there is, because the cause is nearly always one of two things.

A white or unprinted line in the same position on every card usually means a failed printhead element, or debris sitting on the printhead. Clean the printhead carefully with an alcohol swab first. If the line survives a thorough clean, the element has failed and the printhead needs replacing.

A colored or smudged line usually means contamination on a roller, transferring onto each card as it passes. Clean the rollers and run a cleaning card.

Printhead damage is often caused by cleaning it with something abrasive, or by printing over a card with a raised chip on a direct-to-card machine. If you issue contact smart cards regularly, that is worth knowing, and it is one of the arguments for retransfer covered in our direct-to-card versus retransfer guide.

Cards jam or misfeed

Occasional jams happen. Daily ones mean something is wrong.

Check the card thickness setting. Most printers have a lever or a driver setting for card thickness. If it is set for 10 mil and you are feeding 30 mil, or the reverse, the feeder will misbehave.

Fan the cards before loading. New cards stick together, particularly in dry conditions, and static makes it worse. Fan the stack and square it up.

Check for warped cards. Cards stored badly, especially somewhere warm, develop a curve that the feeder cannot handle. Store them flat in their original packaging.

Look at the feed rollers. Worn or dirty rollers lose grip. Cleaning fixes dirty. Worn needs replacement, and that is a bench job.

Do not overfill the hopper. Filling past the marked capacity causes misfeeds on many models.

If the jams started suddenly with no change in cards or settings, something mechanical has likely worn or shifted, and it is worth having the machine looked at rather than fighting it daily.

Ribbon breaks, wrinkles or will not advance

A ribbon that keeps breaking is usually telling you about the printer rather than about itself.

Wrinkling and tearing typically point at a tension problem, a roller that is not turning freely, or excessive heat from a print density set too high. Try reducing the print intensity setting; if the wrinkling stops, that was it.

If the ribbon breaks in the same place every time, look for a burr or rough edge in the path it travels.

Repeated breaks with a fresh ribbon, correct settings and a clean machine mean it needs a technician.

The printer says the ribbon is wrong or will not recognize it

Most modern printers read a chip or tag on the ribbon to identify it, and refuse to run if it does not match.

First confirm you have the correct part number for your exact model. Ribbon part numbers look very similar to one another and a ribbon from a sibling model often will not run. Our ribbon compatibility guide lists the right ribbon for every printer we supply.

Then there is a specific trap on the Fargo HDP5000. The current HDP ribbons and films work on an HDP5000 only if it is running firmware 5.4.5 or above. On firmware 5.3.8 or below they are genuinely incompatible, and the printer reports it as a ribbon problem. If you have an older HDP5000 that has never been updated, check the firmware version before assuming the ribbon is faulty.

Finally, a ribbon that is genuinely finished will also report as an error. It sounds obvious, and it catches people.

Nothing prints at all

Work outward from the printer.

Confirm the printer is powered, online, and not showing an error on its display. Confirm cards and ribbon are loaded. Then print the printer's own internal test card if it has one, which most do. If the internal test card prints, the printer is fine and your problem is on the computer side.

On the computer, check the job is going to the right printer. Multiple installed drivers for the same machine, or a queue paused from weeks ago, account for a lot of these calls. Clear the queue and try again.

If the printer is on a network, confirm its address has not changed. A printer that moved to a new address after a router restart looks completely dead to a computer still pointing at the old one.

Driver problems, which are more common than hardware problems

A large share of what gets reported to us as a broken printer turns out to be software.

Windows updates can replace or corrupt a working driver. Reinstalling the manufacturer's current driver, rather than letting Windows pick a generic one, resolves a great deal.

Check the driver actually supports your operating system version. This is a real wall on older printers: a machine that works perfectly may simply have no driver for a current OS, and no amount of troubleshooting changes that.

Where a card design or template suddenly prints wrong after an update, the template may be referencing a driver setting that has reset. Check card size, orientation and the dual-sided setting before rebuilding anything.

Drivers we host are in the drivers and support section. If you cannot find one for your model, ask us.

Encoding fails but printing works

When the card prints correctly and the stripe or chip does not encode, the fault is usually in one of three places.

The card. Encoding onto a card with no stripe or no chip fails silently on some systems. Confirm the stock actually has what you are trying to encode to. On magnetic stripe, confirm the coercivity matches what the encoder is set for; a high-coercivity setting writing to low-coercivity stock, or the reverse, produces unreliable results.

The settings. Track selection, coercivity and data format all have to match what your reader expects.

The data. Characters the track does not support, or a field longer than the track allows, will fail.

For access credentials specifically, an encoding that appears to work but will not open a door usually means a facility code or format mismatch rather than an encoding failure. Our access credentials and encoding guide covers that, and we can supply cards already programmed to your facility code through prox and access card programming.

Color looks wrong

Cards that print with a color cast, or that do not match the design on screen, are almost always a color management issue rather than a fault.

Monitors are backlit and cards are not, so a card will never look exactly like the screen. Beyond that, most drivers include color adjustment settings, and many manufacturers ship a color matching utility.

Skin tones are the usual complaint. If photographs look unnatural, the source images are worth checking first. Photographs taken under fluorescent or mixed lighting carry a cast that the printer faithfully reproduces.

If the color changed suddenly with no other change, clean the printer and check you have not switched card stock. Different card surfaces take dye differently.

When to stop and call somebody

Stop when you are past the point of cleaning, consumables and drivers, and particularly if any of these apply.

The printer makes a grinding or knocking noise. Something inside is mechanically wrong and continuing to run it can turn a repair into a replacement.

A printhead line survives a thorough clean. That is a part replacement, not a technique problem.

The same fault returns after each fix. Repeated jams or repeated ribbon breaks with correct consumables mean something is worn.

You are considering opening the machine beyond the documented user-serviceable areas. Card printers have tight tolerances and some assemblies are not designed to be taken apart in the field.

We are an authorized service center and we repair on our own bench in Woodridge, which means genuine parts and a short trip rather than a shipping exercise. We will tell you what is wrong and what it costs before doing chargeable work, and if a machine is not worth repairing we will say so even though that is the answer that earns us less. Details are on the ID card printer repair page.

Preventing most of this

Nearly everything above is preventable, and the prevention is cheap.

Clean with every ribbon change. That single habit prevents more faults than everything else combined.

Use genuine consumables. Beyond quality consistency, manufacturer warranties are generally void where non-genuine consumables are used, and a printhead is an expensive thing to lose on a saving of a few dollars a ribbon.

Store cards and ribbons properly. Flat, sealed, in an office rather than a store room or a basement.

Site the printer sensibly. These are office machines. On a plant floor they collect exactly the particulate that causes print faults.

Train two people, and keep a one-page instruction sheet by the machine. The person who knows the printer will be on holiday during your busiest week.

Keep a spare ribbon and a cleaning kit on the shelf. A Monday morning problem that could have been solved in five minutes should not become a Wednesday problem because the supplies are on order.

Quick reference: symptom to likely cause

Where to look first, before working through the sections above.

Retransfer and lamination module problems

Machines with a transfer film or a laminator have a few failure modes of their own.

The film does not adhere evenly, leaving cloudy or lifted patches. This is usually a transfer temperature or speed setting, and most drivers expose both. It can also be card stock: some card constructions accept transfer film better than others, which is why manufacturers specify accepted card types rather than leaving it open.

The card comes out curved. Retransfer applies heat to one side, and a card flattener is standard or optional on most retransfer machines for exactly this reason. If cards are bowing, check the flattener setting before anything else.

Laminate patches sit crooked or lift at a corner. Usually alignment or temperature. Patches that lift at the corners specifically often mean the temperature is too low for the patch being used.

Film and ribbon run out at different times. Not a fault. They deplete at different rates by design, and ordering them one for one is what leaves you with film and no ribbon. Our ribbon and yield guide covers the ratio.