Every week, I think a dozen people call and ask me about plastic card printers they can purchase and use in their office. These devices are great, they print in 300dpi and do a wonderful job, but they aren’t cost-effective for most plastic card usage. Our company sells Evolis printers primarily; which offer an excellent value and a fantastic warranty. They print with excellent resolution; and as you'll read below, are often "field upgradable."
So when do you want to use them? When should you avoid them? Let’s take a look at what a plastic card printer does best.
Plastic card printers are really meant for cards that need to be customized each time they print. They’re great for:
Photo IDs
Membership Cards
RFID & NFC Access or Prox Cards
Photo IDs 
Plastic ID cards are generally personalized with a person's name and a photo. Because it would obviously be hard to print these in bulk and you likely don't need to print a number of them at a time, it would likely be best to print them in house. This would allow you the freedom that buying them from me rarely would. You won't have to worry about order minimums. You won't have to worry about what to do if cards need to be replaced. And you won't have to worry about changes in staff. If you need a card, you just sit down and print a card.
The printers also offer plenty of safeguards and security features, ensuring that not anyone can print the cards as well. So the card printer is an easy solution. It can print you plastic cards on demand. It works on any PVC card, and prints using a dye sublimation technology, which is very durable. They also print around 100 cards per hour, so you can get it done quickly.
Membership Cards 
If you operate a facility that requires a membership card. Something simple, perhaps even with a barcode, the card printer can make your life infinitely easier. By allowing you to print cards on demand, you can control the speed at which your customer is issued cards, and you can also control the information put on the cards.
With a printer, you can print cards on demand and give people the 5-star service demanded by today’s consumers. But keeping costs low is also a big part of what you need to consider. Plastic Printers will generally recommend that you let us pre-print the static information for the cards. This includes all the logo information and anything that will be constant from card to card, freeing you up to print only black text on the cards.
When you print color prints, the price per card to print in color ribbon alone is often $0.75 per card. When printing in monochrome or black, the price per card is closer to $0.03 per card. The cost of the color cards themselves are much lower too, and the prints are much nicer because the millions we've spent on state-of-the-art printing equipment allows us to print more vivid prints than the standard card printer.
RFID and Prox Cards
More and more, the world of security is moving toward proximity and RFID cards for door locks and access. But to be secure, the most important thing is to control the security devices yourself. Sending your cards to someone to have them printed is a very real security risk, and can impact how secure your building is. While this is a small issue for venues like gyms and fitness centers, other facilities like software companies and banks will want this process to remain in house. Instead of using a sticker or label maker to label IDs, it's much easier to use a plastic card printer. These allow you the flexibility to use the RFID or Access card as ID cards, since they're so easily customized. If the highest levels of security are required, look for UV film ribbons and holographic imprinted ribbon that you can buy to ensure that the cards cannot be duplicated.
Software & Hardware
The software bundle you purchase also makes a difference. Upgraded software will upload from spreadsheets, making the process very automated. If you're printing a large volume of plastic cards, it's important that it's easy for you. The last thing you need is to spend 4 hours printing 150 cards. That's extremely counter-productive.
Choosing the correct printer is also very important. With an MSRP of $899, the Evolis Badgy 200 looks like a great deal when put against an Evolis Primacy at $1990. But the Badgy isn't meant to print more than 100 cards a year! And the Primacy can print as many as you need. The Evolis Primacy, is also field upgradable, which no other badge printer I know of is. Meaning, if you buy the base model at $1990 MSRP, but sometime later you need to print 2 sided cards. Rather than trade the printer in, you can upgrade your current printer to print 2 sided. You can upgrade it to encode magnetic stripes, or RFID cards as well. There's so much you can do with the Primacy that it's definitely a printer to check out.
What ISN'T the card printer good for?
The printers aren't great for printing your own gift cards, business cards, or anything that has a static design. It's much less expensive for me to print those types of cards here at Plastic Printers. There's also no point where it's less expensive to print your own. My prices on plastic cards drop as the quantity increases, because there's less labor involved, and it's easier to print massive quantities.
However, the price for printer ribbons is always the same. So whether you print 100 cards or 100,000 cards, the cards will cost as much as $1.50 each.
You also don’t want to print a high volume of cards, as it’s time consuming. A normal card printer would be lucky to print 150 cards in an hour. So 10,000 cards would take you 66 hours to print. If needed, I could have those cards to you in 24-48 hours. Standard turn time is 5 days.
Let us print it for you!
At Plastic Printers, we can print variable data better than anybody, so if you need 10,000 membership cards and you already have the member information, why don’t you let us print the cards for you? The price will be much less than printing them yourself. And it will take much less of your time.
If you have questions, call me anytime!
Cole Goebel
Cole.Goebel@PlasticPrinters.com
#651-319-4762