How to disable the Label Taken Sensor on Honeywell/Intermec printers

The following applies to printers running Direct Protocol or Fingerprint.

There’s a tech note in the Honeywell knowledge base about turning off the LTS sensor usingĀ  the LTS& OFF command, but this only affects the printer when printing a batch of labels, it doesn’t really disable the sensor, it causes the printer to ignore the sensor during batch printing.

To truly disable the sensor you need to execute a setup command and set the LTS value to zero.

First, make a connection to the printer via Telnet (I use Hyperterm) to port 9100. Type the command “VERBON”, press enter and the printer should echo “OK”.

Tell the printer to write its current settings to disk by entering “SETUP WRITE “MYCONFIG”” (quotes around the file name). Now type the “FILES” command to list the files on disk. Use an FTP client to copy MYCONFIG to your computer and open the file with Notepad.

You’ll see the last lines in the file will look something like this:

# MEDIA,PAPER TYPE,TRANSFER,RIBBON SENSOR,9
MEDIA,PAPER TYPE,TRANSFER,LOW DIAMETER,0
MEDIA,CONTRAST,+0%
# MEDIA,TESTFEED,99 146 1 9
MEDIA,TESTFEED MODE,SLOW
MEDIA,LEN (SLOW MODE),0
PRINT DEFS,HEAD RESIST,1272
PRINT DEFS,PRINT SPEED,75
PRINT DEFS,CLIP DEFAULT,ON
# PRINT DEFS,CMD LANGUAGE,Direct Protocol
PRINT DEFS,LTS,LTS VALUE,9

Change the number in the last line to zero and save it to disk, naming it MYCONFIG1 and use FTP to copy it back to the printer:

PRINT DEFS,LTS,LTS VALUE,0

You can save the whole file or just the LTS command.

Return to your Telnet connection to the printer and type the command “FF” to feed out one label.

Type ?PRSTAT to return the printer’s status. It will return 2 which means a label is at self strip point.

Now type “SETUP “MYCONFIG1″” (quotes around the file name) and then sent a ?PRSTAT command again. The printer will now return zero. You have disabled the label taken sensor.

Note that the PM and PC series printer are case sensitive and have a different directory structure than the PX series. When you connect to the PM or PC series printer you have to get the case of the directory name correct (always lower case) and the case of the filename correct too. You can’t FTP anonymously to a PM or PC series, you have to log in as itadmin. Your default directory will be set to /home/user/admin. Change to this directory before you execute the SETUP command:

I’d suggest just copying the above LTS command into notepad and saving it to disk, it’s easier than navigating the PM directory structure.

You could also execute this command with a CF card (PX, PM4i, PF,PD42) or USB thumb drive (PM,PC,PD43) using AUTOEXEC.BAT to execute this command. Make sure your configuration file is in the root of the CF card or USB drive along with the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.