For free you can do these quality checks;
- If you are printing barcodes using a thermal printer and a ribbon, rub hard the barcode with a warm thumb, does the ink smear (if yes then you should have used wax / resin ribbon instead of wax)
- Get a 50p ruler and measure the barcode, is it the correct width? (Why do I mention a 50p ruler - well one comes in the verifier kits and the kit costs over £1,000)
- If you printed a horizontal bar across the top of the barcode - as we suggested - is that bar broken? (i.e. Can you see a fine line through the bar that should not be there?) Then if this thin white line extends in to a vertical bar the barcode is highly likely to be unreadable by some readers.
- If the barcode is EAN-13 (i.e. has 13 digits below usually) does the barcode have a > sign on the right hand side? If no then print one. NOTE: The > (greater than or chevron character) simply protects the light margin or quite zone (the white bits either side of the barcode)
- Can you print the barcode bigger - if so, do so. Don't go mad, but in general bigger barcodes read better.
- On 300 dpi printers do not use 1 dot for the narrow bar width. On 200 dpi printers do not use 1 dot for narrow bar width.
- The barcode number itself can be checked with an inexpensive barcode reader (see https://www.barcode.co.uk)
