[Nhcoll-l] HONEYWELL, PX940 PRINTER, VERIFIER W/PERPETUAL LIC.

Tue Jun 28 17:33:27 EDT 2022

Hi all,

Belated follow-up to my rant below, just in case it helps anyone else. Even after our graduate RA spent hours over multiple weeks with Honeywell customer service and resolved none of our problems, our new IT guy sat down with our machine for 2 hours today and fixed nearly every issue!! If anyone wants advice on this machine, I can probably put you in touch with him directly (I myself was not involved in the process). Most were easy built-in settings, once he found the right menus on the machine (not in the program we use to print). See edits to my original text, below each in red.

  1.  Connecting it to a device was harder than it should have been (our in-house IT could not do it without Honeywell customer service help).
  2.  It prints very faintly. We have it turned up to maximum density and it is just barely at the darkness our old Datamax was on a regular setting (and we have been informed by Honeywell that printing at darkest setting with cause it to die out faster…).
     *   This was fixed by adjusting the heat output settings, NOT the darkness setting.
  3.  It doesn’t seem to recognize the media we already had (supposedly “standard” and can fit any thermal printer). This results in us having to open and shut the print head before every label, just to trick it into recognizing there is media present. It also ejects/feeds about 4-5 labels worth of media after each label.
     *   While we may still not be using the preferred media, he got it to at least stop thinking it was “out of media” by turning off the sensor that is at the front of the machine, just where the label pops out.
     *   The second half of this issue was fixed by changing the setting for the type of media. It now prints continuously with no issue.
  4.  There is no built-in cutter to cut your labels for you (not sure if that is just a model issue or none of these Honeywell ones have it; the company seemed confused by this concept)
  5.  We use FileMaker as our specimen database and our presets on labels there print ok, but the ones in Excel do not (and we basically have to do weird re-formatting things in Excel every time we create a new label)
     *   He is now working on pre-sets now to hopefully avoid this issue too!

We also requested the “official” Honeywell media sample thinking maybe it would start to recognize it (perhaps fixing multiple issues in #3). They have not sent the media yet (requested over a month ago), so I assume we will have to eventually break down and just buy it ourselves, hoping it fixes the problem.

  *   Honeywell customer service is clearly not great; we have still only received the “black” ribbon not the “white” so we can’t really try out the “preferred” media yet (even though the request was nearly 2 months ago). Additionally, the roll they sent is NOT 4” wide which is what all our labels are set for…

Best of luck in your own printing endeavors!
Jessa

___________________________________________________
Jessa Watters, M.S.
Collection Manager, Herpetology
Sam Noble Museum
2401 Chautauqua Ave.
Norman, OK 73072
jwatters at ou.edu
https://jessawatters.weebly.com/
405-325-7771 (phone)
405-325-7699 (fax)
https://samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/collections-and-research/herpetology/
pronouns: she, her, hers

From: Watters, Jessa L. <jwatters at ou.edu>
Date: Tuesday, May 24, 2022 at 2:21 PM
To: Mary Sollows <Mary.Sollows at nbm-mnb.ca>, nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: HONEYWELL, PX940 PRINTER, VERIFIER W/PERPETUAL LIC.
We bought the following machine last Fall: Honeywell PX940
https://www.cdwg.com/product/honeywell-px940-3-core-300-dpi-thermal-industrial-printer/5712690?pfm=srh

It has been a total disaster and we all feel like we wasted a few thousand dollars. Details are as follows:

  1.  Connecting it to a device was harder than it should have been (our in-house IT could not do it without Honeywell customer service help).
  2.  It prints very faintly. We have it turned up to maximum density and it is just barely at the darkness our old Datamax was on a regular setting (and we have been informed by Honeywell that printing at darkest setting with cause it to die out faster…)
  3.  It doesn’t seem to recognize the media we already had (supposedly “standard” and can fit any thermal printer). This results in us having to open and shut the print head before every label, just to trick it into recognizing there is media present. It also ejects/feeds about 4-5 labels worth of media after each label.
  4.  There is no built-in cutter to cut your labels for you (not sure if that is just a model issue or none of these Honeywell ones have it; the company seemed confused by this concept)
  5.  We use FileMaker as our specimen database and our presets on labels there print ok, but the ones in Excel do not (and we basically have to do weird re-formatting things in Excel every time we create a new label)

We have tried a new printhead, thinking it would fix the faintness issue (#2), but it did not. We also requested the “official” Honeywell media sample thinking maybe it would start to recognize it (perhaps fixing multiple issues in #3). They have not sent the media yet (requested over a month ago), so I assume we will have to eventually break down and just buy it ourselves, hoping it fixes the problem. See attached specs from the company.

In the meantime, as an example, I just spent ~1 hr last week printing 10 labels…

Jessa

___________________________________________________
Jessa Watters, M.S.
Collection Manager, Herpetology
Sam Noble Museum
2401 Chautauqua Ave.
Norman, OK 73072
jwatters at ou.edu
https://jessawatters.weebly.com/
405-325-7771 (phone)
405-325-7699 (fax)
https://samnoblemuseum.ou.edu/collections-and-research/herpetology/
pronouns: she, her, hers

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> on behalf of Mary Sollows <Mary.Sollows at nbm-mnb.ca>
Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2022 at 6:55 AM
To: nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: [Nhcoll-l] HONEYWELL, PX940 PRINTER, VERIFIER W/PERPETUAL LIC.
Hello,

I would like to know if anyone has experience using the following thermal label printer for collections stored in ethanol:  HONEYWELL, PX940 PRINTER, VERIFIER W/PERPETUAL LIC., FULL TOUCH DISPLAY, UNIVERSAL FW, ETH, USB, SERIAL, LOW POWER BLUETOOTH, RIBBON INK IN/OUT, MEDIA CORE 3 INCH, DT AND TT, 300 DPI, US POWER CORD.

Our efforts to purchase a Datamax or CAB/Squix were unsuccessful last year because of supply issues so we purchased a Honeywell option.  We returned it to Honeywell in January because it was defective and we have now been offered the option to replace it with a slightly different model, the HONEYWELL, PX940 PRINTER, VERIFIER W/PERPETUAL LIC.

I am also curious if anyone knows of a museum service available to have thermal labels printed by an external organization using the appropriate media and SDR ribbon?  I don’t want to run the risk of “Alphabet soup” in the jars of ethanol caused but incorrect ribbon. We need to deal with a large backlog of labels to be printed that have been accumulating over the past 2 years.  As always, I really appreciate your advice.

Best regards,

Mary Sollows
Invertebrate Zoology
Department of Natural History / Département d’histoire naturelle
New Brunswick Museum / Musée du Nouveau-Brunswick
277 Douglas Ave.
Saint John, New Brunswick
Canada  E2K 1E5

Mary.Sollows at nbm-mnb.ca<mailto:Mary.Sollows at nbm-mnb.ca>
tel: (506) 643-2365
fax: (506) 643-2360 t was defectivt

http://www.nbm-mnb.ca/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.nbm-mnb.ca/__;!!GNU8KkXDZlD12Q!56lbnZS1_foWfdh4wFFp1XbQkvZdItQGWx5EXTsbPhqk0anZvrN-h7tLM6Tg7xB1Z_PgAMJR9rsNcZULXkyQmt2dGw$>

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