One-at-a-time Mailing Label Printers?

An anonymous reader asks: "I work at a small law firm, and we are looking for a better way to print mailing labels. Currently, we print out an entire label sheet (30 labels) for each of our regular clients, storing them in binders. For one-offs, we use a typewriter. I'd like to find a label printer for around $250 (or less) to print labels one at a time. The challenge is that all the printers I can find are thermal print. Our fear is that a label may become unreadable due to heat exposure sometime during mailing. Even if label damage due to heat is rare, we cannot afford to take a chance since many of the documents we mail are time-sensitive. Also, we often send documents unfolded in large envelopes, so addressing #10 envelopes through a laser printer isn't enough -- we need labels!" "The ideal printer would be non-thermal, e.g. inkjet, available through our network so anyone could print from their desktop, usable with some network printing device, and maybe even compatible with our Samba print server. Oh yeah, and I'd like it to be open enough that I can send text to it for printing, so maybe I can write a quick app to let users print labels from our client database, or make their own on the fly. Finally, I'm hoping to find a product that is not discontinued (e.g. Seiko EZ30), as surfing eBay for office equipment is not something my boss is willing to let me do."

Comments

You know...

[Deagol]

You *can* print only one of those 30 labels at a time. I do it all the time.

Re:You know...

[superchkn]

As Deagol noted, unless your office is exceptionally humid, running labels through multiple times is unlikely to cause problems. At a previous job we did this all the time and the one time we had a problem it was attributed to one of the labels having been caught by another sheet in the stack and peeled up, causing a paper jam. Luckily it was easy to remove and thereafter a quick glance at the sheet before use and better storage solved the problem. We ended up creating a script that would generate HTML pages to print given a starting label column and row using a database to provide the address data. It took some fine-tuning to keep it ontrack after 10 or so pages which wouldn't have been a problem if we'd used some word-processing application instead of HTML, but the HTML worked out better for our situation. We'd print our postage information using a thermal printer and then used the laser for the address information though I must admit I no longer recall why. Either way, we never had an issue with either the laser or thermal labels becoming unreadable.

Re:You know...

[angle_slam]

If you use something like MS Word, it's pretty easy. First, create a label page with the one label you have to print. Then print that label. Then, save the label file. Next time you need a label, just erase the first label (from the Word document), and print the next one. (Actually, erasing the first label is optional, the worst that will happen is that your printer will print on a part of the page without a label.

Zebra thermal printers

[duffbeer703]

Joel Splosky from Joel on Software had a similar problem and wrote it up here:

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/HowToShipAn ything.html

I wouldn't worry about label damage if you are using a good thermal printer -- UPS and FedEx both use thermal printers to produce their labels.

Thermal really is the way to go

[everyplace]

At our office we use the Dymo Labelwriter 330 Turbo. Its a great product for exactly what you're looking for. Every day we print singles or hundreds of labels, primarily as shipping labels. Unless you're taking a lighter or some other intense heat source to the surface of the label, the ink isn't going to fade or become distored in any short amount of time. We've never had the quality of the label be at fault for a mis-delivered package. That's primarily left up to the human error, as always.

You should check out the two newest offerings from dymo. They have a 400 model, and one that prints to two different types of labels at once, which can be nice if you occaisionally need clear labels.

Re:Thermal really is the way to go

[MoonBuggy]

I'd have to agree that thermal prints are near enough heatproof, certainly they'd withstand anything the shipping companies will put them through (and keep in mind that if you used an inkjet as the OP requested it'd be prone to running in the rain, a much more likely event) but one thing I've learned that they don't like is adhesives. No idea why, but if you put a piece of tape over a thermally printed label to hold it more securely to the package, the bit that the adhesive is touching will go blank in a day or so with decent sunlight, while the rest of the label will still be fine.

tape a #10 envelope to a larger envelope

[brontus3927]

At the office I work at (a government agency, of course) we just print out #10 envelopes. If something needs to go out in a larger envelope, we just tape to secure the #10 to the larger envelope. If your really worried about the tape falling off, just buy a bunch of those clear document pouches like they use for UPS, and stick the #10 envelope in there. Those pouches don't come off without someone meaning to take it off, and then not easily.

The answer...

[Shads]

... for single labels is-- Dymo. We used them at the post office, we use them where I work now, they work well and consistantly. I've had ~3000 in the field at a time and seen only one or so a month. Good stuff.

Dymo!

[Anonymous Coward]

Our fear is that a label may become unreadable due to heat exposure sometime during mailing.

Jesus fucking christ, get a clue. Thermal print technology is mature and robust. If you worry about heat in transit changing the label, then you should worry about your letter catching fire.

Even if label damage due to heat is rare, we cannot afford to take a chance since many of the documents we mail are time-sensitive.

If you can't take a chance with time delays or loss, then send everything by FedEx. Otherwise use the mail and stop sniveling.

Get a Dymo LabelWriter 330 Turbo. Yes, it's thermal, but it's wonderful. Mailing labels are around 10 cents - more expensive than Avery, but your staff productivity will be much higher. It's fast. It can be shared on a network as a regular windows printer. It has nifty software that can print zip codes, verify addresses, and mail-merge. It has a plugin to print labels directly from MS Word. It even comes with a well-documented API if you want to write your own app. Lots of different label sizes available. It's cheap.

Thermal is fine

[Unholy_Kingfish]

I have NEVER seen a thermal label "overheated" and ruined. In my personal purchases I have seen credit card slips do it, but only one or two ever. We have been selling online for 6 years (this coming year) and have literally had packages with label sent back to us from UPS that were in a train crash and the packages were submerged in a river with ZERO problems. Same with USPS. (We use the UPS labels for USPS stuff, shhhhhh don't tell them)

The thermal labels have a coating on them that makes the almost waterproof. If you use some sort of laser rolled printer, you have to consider water damage to the paper if you use cheap labels. THAT is more likely to be a problem than the whole heating issue.

I checked around and there are different grades of thermal paper, temperature ranges, and coating types. But like I said before, in almost 6 years and over 100,000 orders we have never seen a thermal label do that.

What kind of thermal?

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

The challenge is that all the printers I can find are thermal print. Our fear is that a label may become unreadable due to heat exposure sometime during mailing.

There's different technologies. If you're talking about cash register receipt thermal paper, yeah, I'd not want that. OTOH, we use a SATO thermal printer with film ribbon and polyester labels to print MAC number and serial number labels for some of our products. The film ribbon/poly label is very, very durable and looks sharp.

DYMO's API

[Anonymous Coward]

I have written several applications that fetch and manipulate data and print to the Dymo 300/400 series USB label printers.

The API is has several "levels". There is a OLE level which just sends signals to the Dymo Label application that comes with the printer -- this can be made to work, and is what I always ended up using. The "low-level" API they offer, a more standard way controlling the printer, simply doesn't work. Good luck getting any sort of technical support out of DYMO on any issues you run into.

They have example code in the SDK, which works. WHY it works is not documented. I created my own app, copied in the dymolbl.h and dymolbl.c files, and then spent a day compairing MS Visual Studio Project settings and diffing the makefile I made them generate. No luck.

At one point, I needed to do more than the OLE interface offered, and found myself reverse engineering the label files they send the printer, the .LWL files. It is snippets of rtf formating mixed in with instructions on where to put the result, I think. I didn't figure out the whole thing, just enough to do what I needed to do.

If you want to get a good thermal printer from the point of view of custom control, I advise a serial printer such as the Polymer Technology Systes Model LP2824, which is a re-branding of one of the printers from zebra.com. Download that PDF for that API and compare it to DYMO's documentation, and you will how an API should be documented. For office use, use the serial label printer from a linux machine that shares the printer, and place it next to where you store the stamps and envelopes -- make people print through an internal web site (as a side bonus, you can keep a log of when things were mailed, which can be incredibly helpful sometimes) and pick up the label when they get the envelope.

There are two kinds of thermal printers.

[bruciferofbrm]

There is direct thermal, in which the surface get heated at the contact point, and the specially treated paper (label, what ever)turns black at the point of contact. this is how many old fax machines worked. Yes, indeed, if you got the old style fax paper exposed to heat later, it would turn nasty colors of grey or brown.

Another type of termal printer is called Termal transfer. It used a heating element and a ribbon. Where the printing occurs, the heat transfers the image to the label via the ribbon. this is much like those little label printers may people use now in place of the really old dymo click and spin label printer of yesteryear.

A good maker of label printers that work great is Sato America.

Like many people I bought into the DYMO brand and p[icked up their USB/serial desktop printer. But when it failed my business needs I fell back to my previous exprience with a jewelery manufcature and their projuct labeling needs. They used networked (via jetdirect ports) SATO thermal transfer printers, and those never failed.

The sato I picked up was a cx200 (which looks like its be replaced with a cx400) and is infact a straight thermal printer. I use it for mailing labels. they do not go bad on me in the mail / shipping process. however, if you just simply can not trust that technolgy has moved along far enought for your needs, then thermal transfer weorks better because the label itself is not heat sensitive.

Finally, I agree with the old school methodology of using a tractor feed dot matrix printer. Nothing beats old school tech. Except the user who hates the old school whine that comes with it.