[sen01]

Hi everyone, I really need to buy a printer but for a particular use, printing labels. I wanted to make my own custom Nintendo NES labels (around 2.125″ x 3.8125″ and 300 dpi). However, I'm finding it difficult to figure out what kind of printer should I get? I'm looking at thermal label printers right now but I have no idea if the result of what I'm looking for will match with one of these. Or could I just get a regular inkjet printer and use self-adhesive labels? What do you guys think, I would really like to know more about the thermal label printers and whether if those would be better than an actual inkjet printers, but I really want these labels to look just like a real Nintendo NES label. Thanks for any help I'd really appreciate it.

[mjd420nova]

Labels and envelopes, the two most challenging media to ever pass through a printer. Labels make for very diligent care and feeding. Inkjet printers do very well on labels but overall cleanliness of the printer and age of label stock can cause a huge mess when labels peel off the carrier media and jam the printer paper path. Insuring the lables are fresh and the paper pick up mechanism in the printer is clean will give excellent results. Testing for proper placement of print on plain paper insures consistancy on the label stock. New printers perform well but soon get dirty and begin to jam if not kept clean. Laserjet printers are another story because of the heat(fuzer) element needed to insure the toner particles adhere to the paper will also cause curling of the labels and they will peel off and jam the paper path. I've not seen any label stock that support any thermal type printers but they may exist for certain production environments.

[coastie65]

sen01, on 13 February 2011 - 09:06 PM, said:

Hi everyone, I really need to buy a printer but for a particular use, printing labels. I wanted to make my own custom Nintendo NES labels (around 2.125″ x 3.8125″ and 300 dpi). However, I'm finding it difficult to figure out what kind of printer should I get? I'm looking at thermal label printers right now but I have no idea if the result of what I'm looking for will match with one of these. Or could I just get a regular inkjet printer and use self-adhesive labels? What do you guys think, I would really like to know more about the thermal label printers and whether if those would be better than an actual inkjet printers, but I really want these labels to look just like a real Nintendo NES label. Thanks for any help I'd really appreciate it.

You could use an inkjet. As for labels, you can but the App / labels for that. The labels would be adhesive and on standrd size paper. It would most likely come with a disk with the uilitties to configure everything with. I got one for Christmas several years ago for CD/DVD lables ( also the labels for the Jewel Box ). I think it was Meorex or something. I do remember it was hard to configure to print the labels though. Either that or i was being a bit dense in trying to figure it out.

This post has been edited by coastie65: 14 February 2011 - 02:17 PM

[mjd420nova]

One additional thing to look for in the printer is a straight through paper path. No turn arounds or flip over routes will help to insure the labels remain on the media and won't peel off inside the unit.

[Szczecinianin]

Well, a good inkjet, such as HP, is fine so I can recommend it. I used mine for printing adhesive labels and it did well. Of course, the quality of the adhesive substance is, too, an issue.

PS. Adam Hanuszkiewicz and Violetta Villas, two big names of Polish culture, have died Sunday and Monday respectively.

[brainout]

Be sure to use Avery labels. They have good adhesive, and good instructions on how to print with labels. You can get a cheap old HP 4 or 5 printer in Amazon which is refurbished or cleaned, and use with Avery Labels. Also later HP versions like the 4050. I don't like that printer, but I've seen it used effectively with many envelopes and labels.

Advantage there, is that nearly every word processing or other software you'll use for making the labels on your computer, is backwards-compatible with HP 4 or 5 or its language, and Avery keys its instructions to those printers. My best friend ran a word processing service for years, and that's what she did; millions of labels, thousands of envelopes, using WordPerfect version 12 all the way through XP, as well as DOS.

You can also use a DOS computer, and those are still around and cheap. DOS V, WordPerfect 5.1 or 6 (for Windows), or use XP with DOS Windows, or later versions of Windows and word processing. I've had no luck with Word, at all. But I'm sure Avery has instructions.

Bigger problem is merge printing. I can't get merge printing to work right in Windows, so stayed on DOS. Drives me nuts.