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Label printers come in two basic forms, stand alone label printers and those which are attached to your PC. Their basic function, as the name would suggest, is to print labels, although today’s label printers are capable of printing out more than just labels. You can create card stock and business cards, and some will even offer you the option to use your label printer as a multi use label printer for a significant price tag. The market has a strong value for label printers, including but certainly not limited to using label printers to create shipping labels and other regularly used business items.
The Personal and Small Business Label Printer
Most label printers that are found in stores and on the internet are tailored for personal use. A simple desktop model can be used to create labels and stock cards as well as offering the user business card capabilities. Is there a market for personal desktop label printers? Absolutely. Anyone who is running a business from their home, uses a home office to support business outside the home, or is looking to establish a business inside the home can find that the simple use of a desktop label printer can add a great deal of professionalism to their package.
Whether you are looking to create simple but effective packaging labels or return address labels that are derived of butterflies and kittens for a more professional look, a personal label printer can add a great deal to your personal packaging requirements. Additionally, a personal label printer is versatile enough to receive, on average two to five uses per week for those who own them.
The new versions of the personal or desktop label printers have finally replaced the sticky backed plastic labels of the eighties and offer the user a wide range of label sizes. Because they are printed on the top of the label rather than pounded out from behind the plastic the traditional raised surface and the eventual fading that these labels were known for is history.
Commercial Label Printers
Commercial label printers are a bit more costly, and they are able to handle a great deal more stock and print in much larger quantities. For business and home businesses that do a lot of shipping, transfer package interoffice, and require a higher degree of label printer capacity, a commercial label printer is a good quality deal that can be found for a marginally expensive price. Many small business owners have found the versatility of the commercial label printer be an excellent investment.
The industrial label printer is a good choice for large scale business. Factories, distribution centre’s, and other larger businesses find that the value they receive from their industrial label printer is comparable to using interchangeable printers. (Interchangeable printers is a term used to refer to those printers that can be used for many types of print jobs including label making)
Companies that use these larger printers often find that they lose several hours per day to employee down time because the stock is difficult to change. There is little reported down time when it comes to using industrial label printers. Many large companies are also adopting portable industrial label printers as these are able to hit manufacturing floors. A great example of these is the label printers that are used to mark pallets and boxes that are packed and ready for shipment. They can also be used to identify machinery operations, station organisation, and save time when it comes to providing employee instructions.
Of course, there are additional applications and specialised software programs to make label printers more effective and efficient. For label printers that require encoding and specialised barcodes you can add in the supplemental feature known as the RFID reader which allows for individual as well as mass bar coding in order to accelerate the packaging and shipment process. While these systems often require a crash course in reading and usability, once the system is in place they become rather simple to use.
Any business, large or small, can amend their software to help accelerate the labeling process through the use of automated label printing. This cuts down on the time it takes to create and recreate labels throughout the work day and the entire system will respond to one simple automated response. This has been proven to be a vast time and money saver with fewer employees down time than any other labeling process.
Any of the aforementioned models of label printers can be purchased as a laser printing unit, although the most common printers are those that utilize some sort of thermal, or heat, related printing process. This basically means that the unit superheats the ink within a confined space in order to produce a cleaner mark on the label. The heat creates an instant and permanent bond to the paper so that smudging and smearing are no longer a concern. By the time the label is printed the ink has already cooled to make sure that the labels are clear and of high quality.
Direct thermal units do not create the same long lasting quality as the thermal transfer units. Direct thermal label printers have a shorter shelf life and the quality can start to deteriorate (directly on the label) within a year. For short term label use, like labeling packed boxes within a factory, these types of label printers can be perfectly suitable. However, for a quality label that lasts for a longer period of time before fading one would want to opt for the thermal transfer unit instead.
The popularity of label printers has increased dramatically over the last ten years. With the new technology offering a wide range of possible time and money saving applications businesses from the home office to the large scale international giant can benefit. There is really no limit to the uses that a high quality label printer adds to the business’s ability to organize and maintain inventory, expedite packing and shipping, and even keep store rooms clean and under control. Label printers have come a long way toward creating a better product for less money, and the business world has responded with vigor.
See our label printer reviews for details on the leading
