Zebra Thermal Label Printing using VB.NET

Many, years ago (2001) I wrote a small application in Delphi that would allow a user to print thermal labels to a Zebra or Eltron EPL or ZPL language printer. It also supported printing to dotmatrix labels. That shows how long ago it must have been.
the labels were based on information drawn out of Dynamics GP. Thus warehouse bin location, item description etc was pulled through from GP allowing the goods in department to quickly print off labels for goods they were bagging or stocking.
As we have recently added another company to our premesis it is now desireable for the application to automatically detect which company the part number entered belongs to and print a label with the correct layout for that company out. The applicaiton originally written in Delphi is overdue for a rewrite into .NET.

Original Delphi Dynamics GP Thermal label software

There was no hours available in work time to write this applicaiton so I took it home to write in the evenings. The following posts show you how I got on. I had, as usual forgotten about some of the nice features I had encorporated into the original application.

Part II to follow....