Making IDs is a tedious process

[afuna]

My brother has a couple of jobs, one of them being a (freelance?) photographer. One of his bigger recent jobs involved taking pictures for all the employees of a call center and making the IDs by hand. He's been up all night, poor bro, and it's due later so I thought I should help.

I'm no good at cutting in a straight line, so what I'm doing now is taking the pre-cut printouts (which are on this interestingly textured plasticky paper), and sticking them on the stiff plastic backing. The tedious part is peeling off the protective layer from both sides of the card. Then I hand it back to him for lamination. I think I'll need to peel off something after that, as well. I'm still on my first batch, though, so I don't know what comes next.

I don't know how most other companies do it, but I suspect they print it onto the card directly. However, that probably takes a special machine, which requires money, which... meh. I get no money for this. Maybe I can convince him to cook me an omelet tomorrow (once he's had some sleep) ;P

Comments

[ivles.livejournal.com]

In my new work place *cough* they have a special printer. In the previous one they outsource the job. But, back in the library, I do all the part-time students ID card. Oh, boy, I cut myself several times, and jammed the laminating machine just before my Operating System class!

The new workplace has a holed plastic case, so there's no need to make a hole in the card itself.

Hugs for your brother.

[kateshort.livejournal.com]

Our school has contracted with the yearbook photo people to do card-printing for the IDs. They do the first batch of IDs for the students, but I and my paraprofessional get the honor of making all of the teacher IDs (run twice-- we put Code Red emergency instructions on the back) and all of the replacement student IDs.

We use the Zebra 330i (http://www.zebracard.com/id/card/na/en/index/products/card_printers/performance_card_printers.html) printer, which cost around $1600.00. That's just for the printer-- the ribbons and the hard cards cost more, of course. 5-color ribbons (CMYK and overlay) can output around 200 IDs each, I think... Those aren't that cheap, either, but we charge the kids $2 for replacement IDs, which keeps us in supplies and makes a little extra on top of that for the library.

And I have no clue what the software costs; the company gave that to us, and the background templates and stuff also.

It's *really* nice to be able to print out an ID in about 30 seconds. :)

[afuna]

Eep. That sound painful. My brother has to punch the hole in the card manually, but it's a very safe thing that sort of looks ilke a cross between a stapler and scissors, and there's little risk of injury.

Passed on the hugs!

*hugs ivles as well*

[afuna]

Now that is a serious printer. It took me about 30 seconds just to rub off the plastic covering of the bare card so that we could place the printed ID sheet onto it :)

(My university charged ~$6 for a lost ID card, on the principle that it would teach us better than to lose our IDs *wince* )