News Release from: Able Systems
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 3 April 2002

Printing on a budget

The Ap890 and Ap892 impact printers, new from Able Systems, solve common ticketing challenges at an attractive price.

Note: Readers of the Editor’s free email newsletter will have read this news when it was announced. . It’s free!

The Ap890 and Ap892 impact printers, new from Able Systems, solve common ticketing challenges at an attractive price. These are complete, self-contained printing systems, featuring a choice of power sources to satisfy mains, battery or vehicle 12V supply-powered applications including point of sale receipts, travel tickets, utility billing, or for printing a variety of acknowledgements, authorisations or instructions in industrial, medical and commercial situations. The printers can be customised with logos or special colour cases and are available with a wide range of optional accessories.

These include carry cases with shoulder strap or belt fixing, mounting brackets for console applications, consumables such as paper rolls and ink ribbon cartridges, as well as several battery chargers and host data cables.

Each accepts the standard 57.5mm width paper roll in sizes up to 60mm diameter, and supports the industry standard IBM(r) 224 character set and Euro character, with dot addressable graphics and several character fonts.

The Ap890 prints up to 24 characters per line or 144 dots per line in graphics mode at 2.5 lines per second, while the Ap892 prints 40 characters/240 dots per line at a speed of 1.5 lines.

Both mechanisms support normal, inverted, double height and double width print modes.

A 9600baud RS232 serial data interface enables communications with a host PC, and includes an 8Kbyte data buffer enabling data to be received while previous lines are being printed.

Three operating modes include power saving idle and sleep modes, as well as the active mode.

The printer enters sleep mode automatically after a preset timeout interval, normally 30s.

The paper low condition is indicated by a flashing orange LED, and manual reloading is assisted by pressing the paper feed button.

Other LED status indicators report power-on, battery low, charging mode or sleep mode.

An alternative LED pattern set, optimised for use with a direct power pack, is also available.

The printer status flags can also be communicated directly to the host PC via the RS232 interface.

The unit measures 104 x 158 x 82mm and weighs 400g.

Battery packs of 950mAH NiCd and 1300mAH NiMH are currently available, and can be recharged without being removed from the printer.

Mains powered battery chargers are available from Able Systems, and a single socket on the rear of the printer combines all data and charger functions.

The printer side connector is a Hosiden TCS7167 6-way mini-DIN style socket, and several cable options are available to connect to D-9 COM1, or D-25 COM2 and LPT ports on a standard PC.

An unterminated OEM cable for connection to proprietary user equipment is also available.

• Able Systems: contact details and other news
• Other news in Keyboards, Switches and other Human/Machine Interfaces
• Email this news to a colleague
•
• RSS news feed for Able Systems
• RSS news feed for Keyboards, Switches and other Human/Machine Interfaces
• Electronicstalk Home Page

 
Advertisers! Download our free 2006 media pack now