Customize UPS Shipping Label with Eltron Programming Language

Question

I am integrating with UPS's Shipping Web Services to improve our warehouse's daily process. UPS returns a shipping label for a package in EPL (Eltron Programming Language). I was able to print the label successfully from C#. However my company uses a perforated label that has a doc tab/label beneath the shipping label that can be attached to any internal documentation. UPS's World Ship software has the ability to print information to this doc tab/label and the business users are requesting that mine does the same.

I contacted UPS and their web service does not support returning the doc tab/label in EPL so I embarked on doing it myself. The first thing I tried to do was to just get an idea of trying to print something below the shipping label. So I tried this command.

A12,1210,0,3,1,1,N,"ACCT#"

I appended this to the end of the EPL provided by UPS and it printed at the very bottom of the 4x6 shipping label. So I then started increasing from 1210 to 1250 and noticed that now my ACCT# string didn't print at all. Upon researching some more I thought maybe the EPL from UPS was setting the label height to 4x6 making it so that I couldn't print. (The label itself is 4x8 with the bottom 2 inches being the doc label). Upon checking their EPL I see the following codes at the start.

q795 
Q1600,24

Reading the EPL Programming manual that came with the Zebra ZP 450 printer I am using tells me that this should set the print height and width to 4x8 which left me stumped. So then I thought maybe since I was appending it to the end of the EPL provided by UPS that the printer was ignoring it since it was after the P1 command. So I tried appending it to the beginning of the EPL string provided by UPS and that didn't make any difference either.

What can I do to get both the shipping label and the doc tab/label to print?

Answer 1

We use this to include a DocTab in our NRGship for UPS labels. It gets inserted BEFORE the P1\n at the end of the UPS label.

"\nA17,1330,0,3,1,1,N,\"[date]     PACKAGE WEIGHT [weight] [units]\"\nA668,1330,0,4,1,1,N,\"[multi]\"\nA17,1360,0,3,1,1,N,\"SERVICE [service]\"\nA17,1390,0,3,1,1,N,\"TRACKING# [tracknum]\"\nA17,1420,0,3,1,1,N,\"PACKAGE SERVICE OPTION CHARGES [charges] [currency]\"\nA17,1450,0,3,1,1,N,\"REF 1: [ref1]\"\nA17,1480,0,3,1,1,N,\"REF 2: [ref2]\"\nA17,1540,0,3,1,1,N,\"TOTAL BILLED WEIGHT [totalbilledweight] [units]\"\nA17,1570,0,3,1,1,N,\"TOTAL SHIPMENT CHARGES [totalcharges] [currency]\"\nA17,1600,0,3,1,1,N,\"[negotiated]\"\n"

You may need to replace \n and \" in your coding.

Answer 2

If it were me I would download bartender and then download the bartender printer drivers for an Eltron printer. Set up a dummy printer that prints to a file that uses the eltron printer drivers. Open bartender and create a label with the additional text you want to see at the bottom and print this to your dummy printer that prints to a file. This will give you the raw EPL. You should be able to take this file and see what you need to do in your EPL to make it print correctly.