Setting up a Thermal Printer for Receipt Printing

Thermal Printers: #

2 types of thermal printers are available in the market:

  1. Thermal Line Printers. Easy to Install & Use.
  2. Thermal ESC/POS printers: Complicate to install & use, also some languages & currencies symbols may not be supported.

×WE RECOMMEND USING A THERMAL LINE PRINTER FOR EASE OF SETUP AND GOOD PRINT QUALITY.

Browser-based printing or Thermal Line Printers or Direct Thermal: (Recommended) #

Thermal line printers also called Direct Thermal, are easy to install & use. Also, they support browser-based printing. For better results use paper with a width of 79mm.

To use a thermal line printer follow these steps:

  1. Setup the printer on your computer with the appropriate driver which comes with the printer.
  2. Go to Settings -> Business Locations -> Settings (green color button for each location). Here change the Receipt Printer Type to Browser-based printing and save it.
  3. In the invoice, layout select the Design as Slim
  4. To disable print dialogue preview, follow the steps mentioned here

You’re now ready to use the printer, no more steps are required.

Thermal ESC/POS printers: #

Setting an ESC/POS thermal printer involves 3 steps:

  1. Adding a Printer
  2. Configuring business location to use the added printer.
  3. Installation Pos Print server.

Step1: Adding a Printer #

  1. Add a new printer from Settings -> Receipt Printer
  2. Select the appropriate Connection Type:
    1. For “Network” provide the IP Address of the printer.
    2. For “Windows” map the printer to a file and provide the path of the file. You can do this by sharing the printer with your localhost.
      The path will be in this format:smb://localhost/my_printer_nameORsmb://computer_name/my_printer_name (where my_printer_name is name of the printer)
    3. For “Linux” your printer device file will be somewhere like /dev/lp
      smb://localhost/my_printer_name OR smb://computer_name/my_printer_name (where my_printer_name is name of the printer)(parallel), /dev/usb/lp1(USB), /dev/ttyUSB smb://localhost/my_printer_name OR smb://computer_name/my_printer_name (where my_printer_name is name of the printer)(USB-Serial), /dev/ttyS smb://localhost/my_printer_name OR smb://computer_name/my_printer_name (where my_printer_name is name of the printer)(serial)
  3. Select the capability profile and add characters per line supported in the printer.
  4. Save the Printer configuration.
  5. Check the video below for more details on setting it.

Step2: Configuring Business Location to use printer: #

  1. Go to Settings -> Business Settings.
  2. For a particular business location, go to “Settings” in the actions column.
  3. Change “Receipt Printer Type” to “Use Configured Receipt Printer“
  4. Select “Receipt Printers” from the list of Receipt Printers
  5. Click on Update.

Step3: Installing POS Print Server #

For printing via receipt printer, you will need to install a “pos print server” on your local computer from which is used.

  1. Download the server from this link. by clicking on “Download Repository”
  2. Unzip the zip file.
  3. Rename the unzipped folder to “pos_print_server”.
  4. Move the pos_print_server to the document root (which is htdocs in XAMPP).
  5. Open Command Prompt or also called terminal. And go to the “pos_print_server” directory. You can go to this directory using the “CD” command in the command prompt.
  6. From the Command Prompt which is now inside the pos_print_server directory run the below command:
    php server.php
    After running the command it will start the print server and show the message “Server started…”
  7. Now we are ready to go. Try creating a test sale from the pos screen and it should print in your thermal printer. If you haven’t added a printer then follow the steps mentioned in “Step1: Adding a Printer” and it should work.

Great, now we’re ready to print on a thermal printer.

Give it a test drive.

Video Guide: #

Follow the steps as mentioned in this video up to 2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GRVEdWuxmA Use  pos_print_server instead of the GitHub repo mentioned here.

Go to the POS screen, add a test invoice and check if it prints. If not please check if the pos receipt server is running or not.

ESC/POS Printers #

Many thermal receipt printers support ESC/POS to some degree. This driver has been known to work with:

AURES ODP-333
AURES ODP-5
Bixolon SRP-35
Citizen CBM1
Citizen CT-S31
Daruma DR8
EPOS TEP 22
Epson TM-T88II
Epson TM-T88III
Epson TM-T88IV
Epson TM-T88V
Epson TM-T7
Epson TM-T82II
Epson TM-T2
Epson TM-T2
Epson TM-T7
Epson TM-T81
Epson TM-U22
Epson TM-U295 (requires release() to release slip).
Epson TM-U59 and TM-U59
Epson FX-89
Equal (EQ-IT-1) POS-58
Excelvan HOP-E58
Excelvan HOP-E2
Excelvan HOP-E8
Excelvan ZJ-822
Gainscha GP-589
Gainscha GP-U8
Metapace T-1
Metapace T-25
Nexa PX7
Plus III
Orient BTP-R58
P-822D
P85A-4
Rongta RP326US
Rongta RP58-U
SEYPOS PRP-3 (Also marketed as TYSSO PRP-3
Silicon SP-2
ECO
Star TSP1
III FuturePRNT
Star TSP-65
Star TUP-592
SPRT SP-POS88V
Xprinter F-9
XPrinter XP-Q2C
Venus V248T
Zjiang NT-58H
Zjiang ZJ-587
Zjiang ZJ-589T (Marketed as POS 589T)
Zjiang ZJ-589K

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