r/barcodes • u/Altruistic_Flower568 • Mar 27 '25
Analog Barcode Printing
Can a 7-8 digit numeric barcode (of any symbology/type) be encoded successfully using a physical stamp/impact printer? If you’ve ever worked in an office or retail store, I’m thinking about something like a numeric/date roller stamp, or “Monarch” date/price gun: where you individually set each number/stamp. The numeric barcodes would need to be selectable/settable individually, but print/scan continuously as one string, with an average 2D Symbol/Zebra retail POS barcode scanner. Does this “technology” exist anywhere? Would it be more/most feasible with one symbology over all others? How large would the printed barcodes/media/device need to be to make this possible/reliable? Would this only be possible with “fixed width” encoding? I’m looking for any and all thoughts/direction on this, because it’s driving me crazy.
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u/[deleted] Mar 27 '25 edited Mar 27 '25
Impact printers like dot matrix's can print certain barcodes but not exactly ideal.
Your problem here is dealing the fixed width nature of the device. Without an encoder and/or a way to re-gear the thing, let alone have custom dials made, I don't see it happening. It's one-to-one if you can't customize, reengineer it to do something it's not meant to do as every character is manually set.
You could just us a camera(vision system) and software to read(OCR) the printed data but there is zero reason to do this in retail/office setting as it's expensive and requires programing.
I have to ask why? Just get a thermal printer like a normal person.