Hardware:

Zebra ZE500/511;  I7 8-16GB Ram, 1GB Lan Port, USB 2.0 Connectivity to printer

Database: 500K-2M Records.

BT 2016-2021  (mostly 2019-21)

We're reading a product barcode and performing a lookup into an SQL server db on our host PC.  Finding out if this product is in our database.  That process takes 7-15ms.  Once located we send multiple fields to a BT template.  Average 9 fields per label, 4 or so will be static fields through the job.  The rest are variable data dealing with this specific package.  BT generates the label and sends it to the print spool.  It's automatically printed and applied with an inline labeler.  Run rate is a very consistent 30 packs per minute.  Multiple lines so several thousand labels an hour (5000+)

Our issue is 1) when we start up the first label always takes 15-30 seconds to print.  We suspect this is a BT License acknowledgement issue.  I believe it needs to be on the server and can't be local. 2) Our second issue is that randomly one label will take too long to process (could be licensing) and it's delayed out of the printer.  This causes a package to be skipped and worst...that label is then applied to the next package.  We'll be off by one until we notice the issue.

These are viable labels so we can't send 3000 to the engine at a time.  It's print on Demand so to speak.

Is there a way to inhibit the constant license check.  Perform it once a day verses for every label for example?  Can we license locally for this closed loop system?  Can we preload a label template and only send the variable data?

We've converted everything to ZPL as a test.  It speeds up the process dramatically.  (90% improvement) It's just not feasible to migrate clients off BarTender.

Ideas?