Founded in 1976, CompuSystems (https://www.compusystems.com/) has enjoyed many years as a major registration service provider for the trade show industry. They offer integrated software that meets the specific needs of their clients, creating an ecosystem that fosters the buyer and seller relationship.
Their goal is to establish long lasting relationships with their clients based on trust, a shared success and a commitment to quality. Their vision is to have every customer recommend CompuSystems. To succeed, CompuSystems is dedicated to making investments in quality products and services to support their customers now and in the future.
When Jeremy Kubik, Director of IT for CompuSystems, and I first communicated, he was looking for an alternative to the Xerox Color printers they were using. Jeremy said, “We’re looking for an alternative to the Xerox sheet fed printer. We want to use some type of continuous badges; many of our badges are 4” x 12”. In addition, we need a smaller footprint as our registration desks have limited space. Plus we need to have the capability to print on-demand and in color.”
Based on our discussion, I sent samples of both 10 mil paper and 8 mil poly badges designed to work in the C3500. The poly material is more expensive than the paper; but prints great and is very durable. Ink costs are less, generally, compared to laser.. On the sample artwork provided by Jeremy, I estimated the ink cost for the C3500 printer at $0.049/badge. Not bad for a 12” tag.
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| 4″ x 12″ Badge Ink Cost-C3500 |
As CompuSystems consider alternatives, I found a new 8 pt tag paper tag material that was stiffer and printed great. Plus this material was very affordable. With this new material, Jeremy created a new 12” tag design, set up to print 2, 4” x 6” badges separated by a crease. With this design, the C3500 can print a two-sided badge.
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| 4″ x 12″ Badge Design |
Based on the available materials, running costs and printer cost, CompuSystems purchased C3500 printers for their badge printing.
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| C3500 Badge Printers |
Even more interesting to me, is how CompuSystems deployed the printers in an overall solution. First, how the printers were deployed. According to Jeremy, “to install and configure the printer drivers, I figured out how to accomplish this task via a batch mode. This step was important as every badge pickup desk at each event uses a different server. The batch driver deployment makes it easy for us to set up an event.”
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| C3500 Badge Printers |
In addition, CompuSystems uses BarTender to create the templates and print badges. According to Jeremy, “we use BarTender to print our badges. Our Unix-based registration application looks up each person in the database and “prints” via port 9100 to the local BarTender server. BarTender then adds the variable information to the template to create each individual badge. We’re printing hundreds or even thousands of badges at a time with variable information. All that information is then synchronized with our main servers. BarTender works great for us.”
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| BarTender Badge Printing |
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| C3500 Badge |
Jeremy and CompuSystems has built a great solution for printing color badges on demand using the C3500 printers and BarTender. Jeremy says “we’re very happy with the performance of the C3500 in our first event. They’re working great; printing very fast. We especially like the short time to first print. Plus the print quality is sufficient for our situation.”
In addition, we’ve found badge material, both paper and poly that print great and is affordable.
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| Fanfold Badge Tags |
If you need to print event badges, contact us. We’ll help you move to printing color badges on-demand, saving you time and money.
Guy Mikel
855-962-7670