Printing from Origination Artwork
Printing presses such as Flexographic and Lithographic tend to be operated by dedicated printing departments perhaps printing packaging, or periodicals and sometimes labels. When printing plates are used care must be taken to ensure the plates are produced accurately, and allowances made for bars spreading due to variations in plate pressure and quantity of ink applied. It is normal for a certain amount of Bar Width Adjustment to be built into the origination artwork to compensate for the anticipated spreading that occurs in the printing process, and your printer should be able to advise on this.

As printing plates are reused there will be an inevitable decline in the quality of the print. Appropriate quality control equipment should be used to ensure that printing plates are replaced before the quality drops to an unacceptable level.

Printing From Label Design Packages
The thermal transfer and direct thermal printers tend to be used for label printing and can be purchased quite economically. The DPI or Dots Per Inch is an important factor in determining the choice of barcode sizes you will be able to print accurately. It is important to obtain a good match of ribbon to media in Thermal Transfer printing to avoid printing barcodes with defects or smudges. Your supplier should be able to advise you on this.

With most printing technologies it is preferable to print picket fence format (from the bottom of the barcode to the top) as opposed to ladder format (from one side to the other), to encourage even print quality.

Labels
Usually a random bar code number is suitable for tracking and tracing, preferably sequentially numbered so that blocks of numbers could be allocated where necessary to particular depots, regions or factories. Bar code labels on self-adhesive backing are ideal for putting on to documents and items that need to be tracked or traced. These can either be purchased pre-printed or can be generated by the use of a software package and a suitable printer.

Although it is possible to use very cheap packages for producing bar codes and use conventional ink jet printers or laser printers, a word of caution should be given in that these cheap software packages do not always meet the specifications that are required to ensure satisfactory reading. Also the use of the wrong type of printer or material means the bar code on the label can easily be washed off or destroyed, whereas long life is usually important in asset control.

Purchase of the correct printer and software package will always be the most economic in the long run. Remember that the poor quality is remembered long after the cheap price has been forgotten. Alternatively labels can be easily obtained pre-printed.