Brother P-touch D600 Label Maker

This document details the USB communication trace between a Brother P-touch D600 label maker and the P-touch Editor program.

Upon startup, the program sends 1b 69 58 47, which seems to be a system status query command.

The printer responds with 71 02 which is 625 in little endian binary encoding. This is the length of the next message which comes in 40 byte chunks with the last one being less - not padded.

The message uses CRLF for newlines.

<<PRINTER CONFIGURATION>>
[Printer]
FormVer =1.00
Printer =PT-D600
PrintID =6430
SerialNo=D6Z608109
ProgVer =V1.01
BootVer =V1.00
FontVer =V1.00
ColorVer=V1.00
SymVer  =V1.00
EromVer =V0.010
PV      =        1,466
PN      =          202
LC      =            1
BC      =            0
FR      =            0
SB      =            5
NB      =            0
MR      =            0
LL      =            0
AF      =            0
CC      =          236

[Printer Settings]
Auto Power Off =480Minute(s)

[File Memory]
Available =2260char
Files     = 0/99

[Label Collection Memory]
Categories = 0/30

The program then sends 1B 69 53 and the printer responds with 32 bytes:

80 20 42 30 6a 30 00 00 00 00 09 01 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 08 00 00 00 00 00 00

Offset	Size	Field	Value
0	1	Print head mark	80 hex
1	1	Size	20 hex
2	6	Signature	BOjO\0\0
9	2	Error	TODO
11	1	Media width
12	1	Media height
13	5	Reserved	Zeroes
18	1	Media length
19	1	Status type
20	3	Phase type
23	1	Notification number

Status types:

Byte	Type
0	Reply to status request
1	Printing completed
2	Error
6	Phase change

Error bits:

Bit	Error
0	No media
1	End of media
2	Tape cutter jam
3-7	Unused
8	Replace the media
9	Expansion buffer full
10	Transmission error
11	Transmission buffer full
12	Cover open
13-15	Unused

Commands

• 1B 40: printer clear print buffer
• 1B 69 53: status request
• 1B 69 58 47: configuration request

Additional Resources

http://www.undocprint.org/formats/page_description_languages/brother_p-touch

P-touch USB protocol description.

http://etc.nkadesign.com/uploads/Printers/95CRRASE.pdf

Documents the P-touch protocol.

https://github.com/cbdevnet/pt1230

Documents the P-touch communication when printing and crucially the format the bitmap and linemap data are sent in.

https://github.com/furrtek/PTouchHH

Patches the printer on the controller level to replace firmware and then the whole controller.

https://github.com/EtherGraf/ptouch-print, forks and copies

Copies:

• https://github.com/clarkewd/ptouch-print
• https://github.com/Nihlus/ptouch-print

https://apz.fi/blabel/