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

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.

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.

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.

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.