1. GK420d Desktop Printer User Guide
  2. Introduction
  3. GK Series Thermal Printers
  • GK420d Desktop Printer User Guide
GK Series Thermal Printers

GK Series Thermal Printers

The Zebra GK420d printer provides direct thermal printing at speeds up to 5 ips (inches per second) at a 203 dpi (dots per inch) print density. It supports both ZPL and EPL Zebra printer programming languages and a wide variety of interface and feature options.
The G-Series printer features:
  • Automatic printer language detection and switching between ZPL and EPL programming and label formats.
  • OpenAccess™ design for simplified media loading.
  • Color-coded operator controls and media guides.
  • Zebra Global Printing Solution—supports Microsoft Windows keyboard encoding (and ANSI), Unicode UTF-8 and UTF 16 (Unicode Transformation Formats), XML, ASCII (7 and 8 bit used by legacy programs and systems), basic single and double-byte font encoding, JIS and Shift-JIS (Japanese International Standards), Hexadecimal encoding, and custom character maps (DAT table creation, font linking, and character remapping).
  • On-The-Fly OpenType and TrueType font scaling and import, Unicode, preloaded Swiss 721 Latin 1 font, one resident scalable font, and a selection of resident bitmap fonts.
  • Improved printer performance: faster print speeds and a 32-bit processor.
  • Adaptive auto serial port cable sensing and configuration for plug-and-play integration.
  • A complete suite of free software applications and drivers to configure printer settings, design, and print labels and receipts, get printer status, import graphics, and fonts, send programming commands, update firmware, and download files. Clone printer settings and send graphics, files, fonts, and firmware (updates) to one or more Zebra Ethernet and locally connected printers with ZebraNet Bridge.
  • Printhead test and maintenance reporting are enabled and customizable by the user.
  • The G-Series direct thermal printer models also include support for Line Mode printing to support EPL1 legacy programming-based printing applications.
The GK printers offer these basic printer options:
  • Label Dispense (Peel-Off).
  • Internal 10/100 Print Server and Ethernet Interface.
  • Zebra ZBI 2.0 (Zebra BASIC Interpreter) programming language—ZBI allows you to create custom printer operations that can automate processes, and use peripherals (i.e. scanners, scales, keyboards, Zebra KDU or KDU Plus, etc.) all without being attached to a PC or network.
This user guide provides all the information you need to operate your printer on a daily basis. To create label formats, refer to your programming guides or label design applications such as ZebraDesigner.
Your printer, when connected to a host computer, functions as a complete system for printing labels and tags.
Many printer settings may also be controlled by your printer’s driver or label design software. Refer to the driver or software documentation for more information.