Set Printer Clock from BarTender
we switched from Colos to BarTender as our enterprise printing solution in a food production environment, meaning we use a variety of printers for packet coding and case labelling. On packets and labels we print the time of day driven by the printer clock and these clocks are not automatically synchronised with time servers and tend to deviate quite a bit over time.
Now I am looking for a solution to send the (printer dependent) SET CLOCK command to the printer to automatically synchronise it with the server time (which is synced with a time server in our network)
I know I can send direct printer commands from a document, but if I send a SET CLOCK command, I need to insert the current time value in the command string as well and I don't know how to do it. Unless I can just insert a %variable% in the command, which I don't think will work.
All and any suggestions and experiences are welcome.
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If you use a Seagull driver then you can append direct printer commands to a label in the location shown below if that helps
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pthane Thanks Peter, I am aware of that option but if I wanted to send a SET CLOCK command at the beginning of every print job, how do I get the current date and time into that command box? It does not look like I can enter any system variables here. For instance, for a Markem-Imaje X60 the command would look like this:
~CS10:25:40 19/07/2023|
How do I get the current date and time in the required format "hh:mm:ss dd/MM/yyyy" into the command box?0 -
Not sure if you can do that automatically but there maybe another way but need to look into it
Are there any other protocols/commands needed and are you using either Automation or Enterprise editions? Are the devices networked and have an IP address?
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We have Enterprise Edition and all printers are on an Ethernet wired network with IP addresses. Are you thinking socket connection from an Integration? That, or some fancy PowerShell script would be an alternative.
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Yes that was what I was looking at. I cant actually test it here but in theory it would be set up something like this:
- You could add to the label off to the side of the print area) the Printer Name (from Print Job Fields Data Sources) and the date and time field including the ~CS prefix and then add an action to output/write the date field string in text file that has the name of the printer (plus a file extension).
- An Integration could be created for each printer, waiting for a file to arrive that has the name of the printer and then that write the %Event Data% (ie the date command and string) to the IP address of that printer.
I am guessing the label files just sit on the device waiting for the operator to start the print job and so hopefully that would mean it would react to the set clock command first before the printing has begun.
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Thanks pthane I think I have enough to go on, the trigger for me was mentioning the Integration. We receive a web service call from the MES system to load the printers with the layouts and data and I can send the SET CLOCK commands directly from the Integration and not from the document.
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