label printer recommendation

I need a label printer. I will not need a high number per day, but I will need to print labels, for example UPS. The UPS labels are wide, but on the other hand, I will also need to print labels much narrower, maybe as narrow as 19mm. For the UPS labels I will need paper, but for the narrow labels I will need something more durable than paper. Which label printers are good for these uses? I have looked at Zebra, Dyno and Brother and I am sure there must be also others. Maybe I will need two separate label printers, but if possible I would prefer to have all necessary capabilities in one unit. Thanks to you in advance for any helpful recommendations.

go with the king.

iirc, the UPS labels are 4x6, and back when they provided the printer they sent a Zebra. Since then we've had three other Zebras (two small-core and one large-core high-speed) and found them charmingly simple to use. However, these are thermal labels: is that what you're looking to print?

Yes thermal is what I want. I need a printer that will print narrow labels(approx. 18mm) with medium more durable than paper for things like tennis racquet, and also wide labels of paper for use like UPS.

for a tennis racquet and the like I'd go with something like a Brother P-Touch. For UPS I'd go Zebra. Both are thermal (actually I think the P-touch is thermal transfer but could be wrong), but the label stock is quite different. You could possibly get just the one printer for all of it, but it's not something I'd go for, because thermal labels tend to fade over time.

We use a Zebra printer (TLP-3844-Z) for the bottom labels of an electronic device we build. We liked the Zebra because it was relatively cheap, supposedly high resolution, easy to program, relatively high quality, and we could get custom-sized labels for it.

There are lots of different label materials offered, and many of them are pretty tough and chemical resistant. Best to get a sample, and abuse it yourself to see if it will work for you.

It's almost everything we had hoped it would be except:

1. It's slightly lower resolution than its specs indicate because it doesn't lay down ink too uniformly. Some things get smudged together. We altered our label design to deal with this.

2. When it prints lots of labels (like 500 at a time), the increased heat of the print head makes print progressively lighter --- the blacks kind of turned grey. We solved this by letting the printer rest every 10 or 20 labels so it had time to cool off. This may be caused by the label material we use.

3. It's pretty smart when it runs out of labels, and will pick up where it left off seamlessly after you refill it. It is completely clueless when it runs out of ink, and will keep on printing. So we have to watch it every so often when we print labels. It's pretty wasteful of ink, too.

4. The model we got doesn't have a tray to catch the labels coming out, so it kind of spews them all over the floor in one long stream, and someone has to roll it up when it's done.

We didn't like any of the label design programs that support the printer, so we wrote our own script to output what we needed in the printer's programming language. It's pretty easy to use actually.

Also, we can print from Windows or Linux, and do the kind of automation we need done. For example, we have a web front end on our script, and the production people can print out labels for themselves through that inferface.

It works fine for what it is, and unless you spend tons more money, I don't think you can do appreciably better.

--Andre

Originally Posted by A Y

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We use a Zebra printer (TLP-3844-Z) for the bottom labels of an electronic device we build. We liked the Zebra because it was relatively cheap, supposedly high resolution, easy to program, relatively high quality, and we could get custom-sized labels for it. There are lots of different label materials offered, and many of them are pretty tough and chemical resistant. Best to get a sample, and abuse it yourself to see if it will work for you. It's almost everything we had hoped it would be except: 1. It's slightly lower resolution than its specs indicate because it doesn't lay down ink too uniformly. Some things get smudged together. We altered our label design to deal with this. 2. When it prints lots of labels (like 500 at a time), the increased heat of the print head makes print progressively lighter --- the blacks kind of turned grey. We solved this by letting the printer rest every 10 or 20 labels so it had time to cool off. This may be caused by the label material we use. 3. It's pretty smart when it runs out of labels, and will pick up where it left off seamlessly after you refill it. It is completely clueless when it runs out of ink, and will keep on printing. So we have to watch it every so often when we print labels. It's pretty wasteful of ink, too. 4. The model we got doesn't have a tray to catch the labels coming out, so it kind of spews them all over the floor in one long stream, and someone has to roll it up when it's done. We didn't like any of the label design programs that support the printer, so we wrote our own script to output what we needed in the printer's programming language. It's pretty easy to use actually. Also, we can print from Windows or Linux, and do the kind of automation we need done. For example, we have a web front end on our script, and the production people can print out labels for themselves through that inferface. It works fine for what it is, and unless you spend tons more money, I don't think you can do appreciably better. --Andre
Andre, thank you for sharing with me your experience. Heat for me should not be a problem because I will not do high volume. For shipping paper labels will be fine. For tennis racquets I will be replacing the label each time I restring my racquet, so while I do not need chemical resistant I would like something except paper for tennis racquets for easily removal. But I would prefer a thermal printer. Here is example of tennis racquet label I would like to print for tennis: and here is UPS label:

other example:

hws,

For the UPS shipping label, I'd just use a regular laser printer, and print it out on a letter-sized page and fold it in half. That may not be too cost-effective if you ship a lot. I'm not sure --- UPS just gives us a whole shipping system here with a printer, so I may not be the best person to answer this question.

For the tennis rackets, the Zebras will be fine, and there may be a stock label size that will work for you. There are lots of different label types and glue types, so you can get water resistance (something a regular desktop inkjet doesn't do well at all), as well as backing glue that's not too tenacious.

We also needed fancier control over our label printing because we print serial numbers, so we had to keep track of that. If you're printing out small volumes, and the unique info is something you enter by hand (customer name, string weight, etc.), then one of the ready-made label programs that work with the Zebra ought to be good enough. If possible, I'd try to get a trial or some kind of money-back guarantee. The Zebras aren't super expensive, but we paid around $1500 for everything, and that's not too trivial.

--Andre

Andre, thank you again for your kind follow up. To this point I had been doing what you described, using regular laser printer for UPS and, when I am in US, for Post(USPS) also. At a certain point this is inefficient.
For the tennis racquets(which I string for myself and as a favor for some friends) you are correct, I will need to print string type and tension(two if different type of string in main and cross), date of stringing, and "constant pull" for the type of tension system of my stringing machine. For this application is where vinyl or similar label will be better than paper.