Honeywell PD43 Label Printer

The market for mid-range or light industrial label printers is pretty competitive, and Honeywell has added a new contender – the Intermec PD43 and PD43c.

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a lot of features usually found in the more expensive industrial printers find their way into the mid-range and that trend continues with the PD43.

This new model is also interesting in that all of the marketing materials are now branded as Honeywell, with no mention of Intermec – the branding on the printer itself is still Intermec so a little room for confusion maybe?

There are two versions of the new printer – the PD43 and the smaller PD43c (the PD43c is about half the depth of the full-size version, so could be perfect for jobs where space is limited). The PD43c can be supplied with a tray designed to handle airline boarding passes – one of the applications that this version is intended for.

The first thing one notices when seeing the new printer is the nice colour graphic display (HoneyMec also sells the machine without the display) which is a nice touch for a machine in this class). It doesn’t have the touchscreen feature of the PM43 – instead uses the keys on the front panel to navigate through the menus. For anyone wanting to run applications on the printer, using HoneyMec’s SmartPrinting concept, the nice display would be very helpful.

There are a range of different covers available for the PD43 that allow for varying maximum label roll sizes – with the bubble door, the PD43 can handle just over 8 inches diameter rolls, while the PD43c needs to use an optional external roll holder to achieve this. The new printer can handle label core diameters of 1, 1.5 and 3 inches, so anyone upgrading from one of the plastic clamshell printers will be able to use up their existing label supplies.

Oh, on the subject of labels, I do like that the labels are installed with a centerline datum, rather than running along one edge. We’ve found that this can help avoid those pesky ribbon wrinkles when using thermal transfer. Unlike some other very compact printers, the access to the thermal ribbon supply looks to be easy as well – ribbons can be inside or outside wound.

The standard interfaces for the PD43 are a little sparse – actually, just USB. All the usual connections, including WiFi and Bluetooth are available as options, however. I prefer to have the basic USB, serial, parallel and Ethernet as standard, given a choice.

The PD43 can be supplied with either 203 or 300 DPI resolution and comes with Intermec’s IPL, Fingerprint and Direct Protocol languages with emulation for the various competitors languages available via emulation.

Need RFID? You are in luck – both HF and UHF RFID encoding is available as an option.

All in all, the new PD43 looks to be a capable printer for a lot of applications. It is available now, so if you think it might fit into your labeling operations let us know.

Want to get started with improving your printing and packaging processes? Call ID Technology  toll free at: 888-438-3242 Option#3 or you can contact me directly at dholliday@idtechnology.com We’ll get you in touch with one of our ID Technology specialists, right in your area.