Printing barcodes using SBPL to a SATO printer

[Former Member]

Goal: Print barcodes from SmartForms to a SATO CL408e printer.

Problem: Everything is hooked up and ready to go but the barcode doesn't appear. Using a hex dump mode on the SATO I can see the data coming through ok but no label is rendered.

What I have discovered is that I need to be able to produce the ascii code ESC (27) from within SmartForms. The documentation from SATO said to use ^ (carat). However, what I'm finding is that the LabelGallery program that CAN print a label sends SBPL (SATO Barcode Programming Language) commands prefixed by ESC. The trick is that I should be able to do this from standard texts and not the old PRINTER-FUNCTION method.

Is there way to do this? Am I approaching this probelm from the wrong angle?

Thanks all!

Crew Reynolds

[Former Member]

Shortly after posting this question I received an answer from SATO. Apparently on the CL480e (and likely other models) there is a dip switch (DSW2-7 to be precise) that must be in the ON position. This switch causes the printer to interpret the ^ (carat) character 5E to an escape character 1B.

This is a very specific fix but perhaps it will help someone someday.

Thanks,

Crew