rfidzebra-printerszpl

How do I print to an RFID label on a Zebra ZT411 printer?


I have been searching for hours... I found Zebra's RFID guide here: https://www.zebra.com/content/dam/support-dam/en/documentation/unrestricted/guide/software/rfid3-pg-en.pdf Not that it's very useful -- it's extremely confusing and not designed at all for a beginner to RFID printing.

However, on Page 21 there's a sample RFID label. This is the ZPL:

^XA
^FO50,50
^A0N,65
^FDSimple write example
^FS
^RFW,H
^FD112233445566778899001122
^FS
^XZ

And this is the result when I send those commands to the printer:

Sample RFID label

(BTW, it printed three copies, even though I only sent those ZPL commands once.) And what is all that "void" nonsense? I have run the printer's media-calibration and RFID-calibration routines. So why is it not centered on the label?

And allegedly this thing will read these labels after it has printed them, but I can't seem to get it to do that, either. Do I have to peel the label off and stick it somewhere to make it read? Or is it supposed to back-feed to get the label under the antenna somehow? How do I make it read the labels so I can verify that it printed correctly?

If anyone has any tips, I'd greatly appreciate it. This is my first attempt at RFID printing and ZPL, so I have literally no clue what I'm doing, and there are no "Get Started Here" guides that I can find anywhere online. Thanks.


Solution

  • Apparently calibration is EXTREMELY important on these things. The auto-calibration doesn't like this label stock, either, apparently.

    After finding the "manual calibration" procedure on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBpfgIoR2U8), I followed it and it appears to have worked. It prints in the proper place on the label and doesn't smear "VOID" all over it.

    Going to have to try to find some different label-stock I think. Something where the auto-calibration doesn't fail. Because this manual calibration takes too long when people are waiting in line to get labels printed.