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Setting up your label printer (Optional)

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You can use a label printer in different areas in xentral. Possible areas of application are, for example, warehouse labels (for labeling/scanning the warehouses), item labels (labeling at goods receipt), serial numbers (storage/production) and similar.

For printing shipping labels or parcel labels, you should use the printer as a regular document printer. You do not need a connection via an adapter box. The label printer if you want to print XML labels (stock labels, article labels, etc.) via xentral. should be printed. All information in this article refers to the label printer Zebra GK420t. We do not actively support other models.

Administration > Settings > System > Printers or Super-Search Printers.

Basic information on adapter boxes

Xentral is software that is usually run on a web server, is often operated in a data center. If you want to print receipts or labels automatically, you have to manage to transfer the PDF files from the webserver to the printer.

To do this, you store PDF files on the server, which are regularly copied by a program to a local computer, which is then printed as a batch, so to speak. However, the driver on your local computer or similar must always be maintained. Under Windows you have to check after each update if all settings are still correctly present;

As an alternative, there is communication via the adapter box. This means, that you don't have to copy PDF files and send them locally to a printer. Instead, the adapter box receives the print jobs via an API. The drivers for our recommended printers are installed in the adapter box, you don't need to worry about them.
Another advantage of the connection via adapter box is that you can use it also over the WLAN can be used and not necessarily a network connection in the warehouse is necessary. To do this, you need the adapter box like a normal computer in the WLAN. For the configuration of the WLAN of the Raspberry PI you can find numerous Instructions online.

The setup with an adapter box connected label printer then looks like as follows:



You can also connect other devices to xentral using adapter boxes. However, per adapter box, only the connection of one device is possible, because they as an embedded system only handle the requests of one device. 

Possible devices to connect are: 

  • Zebra printer
  • Scale (models supported by xentral)
  • Bond printer + drawer

Hardware setup

The following instructions are for the Zebra GK420t label printer. Other Models are not actively supported by us.
Proceed as follows to set up the hardware:

  1. Unpack and check for completeness
  2. Insert the thermofoil
  3. Insert the labels
  4. Run the automatic calibration of the print area
  5. Calibrate the print intensity

Settings in xentral

Now that the label printer has been set up, make these settings in xentral:

  • Generate the API Key
  • Configure the adapter box
  • Add the printer in xentral

For concrete instructions on how to set it up and labels can be found in our manual. 

Click here for Step 12 - Business Accounts

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