Most barcodes that will not scan are printed in a color instead of pure black, are too small for the scanner, or are crowded by other artwork. Set the barcode’s color to pure black (#000000) so the printer uses its black resin panel, make it bigger, and leave clear space around it.
1. Print it in pure black
A card printer’s ribbon has color panels and a black resin panel (K). Pure black text and barcodes go on the resin panel, which prints sharp, dark bars. Any other color, even a very dark grey, is printed with the color panels, and the bars come out soft.
In the designer, select the barcode. If its color is not pure black, the properties panel says so and offers Use pure black. Some drivers also have a setting for what goes on the black panel; check it sends black text and barcodes to resin.
2. Give it room
The designer has no minimum barcode size, so these are rules of thumb from scanners rather than limits in Badgewright:
- Leave empty space on both sides of a linear barcode (Code 128, Code 39), and all round a QR code, Data Matrix or Aztec. Do not let a photo, a background or the card edge touch it.
- Make linear barcodes wider as the value gets longer. A long value squeezed into a short box makes bars too thin for the printer to draw cleanly.
- Keep it inside the safe zone (Card panel, Show safe zone), because printers can shift slightly.
Badgewright renders cards at 300 dpi, the resolution most card printers print at.
3. Check the data
Badgewright draws each barcode from the person’s record, and checks it before printing. If the value is empty or has characters the symbology cannot hold, you are warned with Check barcodes before printing, listing each card. You can fix the records, or Print anyway, which leaves that barcode off those cards.
The six symbologies:
- Code 128: letters, digits and punctuation. The usual choice for ID numbers.
- Code 39: capital letters, digits and a few symbols. Older scanners and systems often expect it.
- QR code, Data Matrix, Aztec: square 2D codes that hold longer values. They need a 2D scanner or a phone camera.
- PDF417: a stacked 2D code, often used on licenses.
Ask whoever runs the scanners, such as a library, cafeteria or door system, which symbology and value format they expect. A barcode that scans but holds the wrong format fails the same way as one that does not scan.
4. Test it
Print one card and scan it with the actual scanner it will be used with, before printing a batch. Ticking Show human-readable text on a Code 128 or Code 39 barcode prints the value under the bars, so you can compare what the scanner reads with what was printed.