I'm facing a huge problem with over 40 new Zebra ZQ521 label printers. They seem to choke and stop printing in the middle of printing UPS shipping labels, displaying a battery with a shield icon on the screen. The manual states that this icon means the printer is in 'Power save' mode, but I've already turned off all related settings, including power.sleep.enable, power.inactivity_timeout, and power.energy_star features. I've been on the phone with Zebra support for three hours, and we tried various firmware versions and commands, but nothing has worked. It happens regardless of whether I'm using a fully charged battery, direct DC power, or even an old battery. In contrast, the older model ZQ520 works perfectly with the same labels and media. Interestingly, when I increase the darkness setting beyond 20, the slowdown keeps it from failing, but it's too slow for our production needs. Any ideas on what might be causing this?
1 Answer
Sounds like you might want to test the print job. One user found their similar issue only affected PDF files. Have you tried printing a test page from an image file or a text document instead of a PDF? That could help narrow down the problem.
Yeah, I read about that. I made a data matrix barcode and it still stopped, but now the log shows it's a media out issue. It’s hard to tell if the problem is firmware-related or if it's a feeding issue since the printers also squeal when they run out of labels.