All of this started innocently, wanting to label each end of cat6 drops with my jewelry inventory’s ArchCrown labels…then I cut the tag’s tail off for network assets…
I use blue painters tape on my sterilite bins. While not quite as nice as full on labels, it stays put while still being easy to remove without leaving residue even after years.
I’ve got a bunch of those bins on “heavy duty” wire shelves from Walmart that are surprisingly decent, so long as you make sure they aren’t bent to shit.
Can anyone give a recommendation for a labeling device (?) that can handle a shop environment with stuff like IPA maybe touching the labels on a day-to-day basis?
Have never had any label makers before and am in dire need to help bring a bit more order in. But at the same time my gut feeling that there are many garbage manufacturers out there prevents me von just ordering one.
For sure, you want thermal transfer onto a laminated poly label.
There are two basic ways to print on a label.
direct thermal - print head burns image directly onto paper material.
thermal transfer - ribbon transfer onto paper or polyester material.
You don’t want direct thermal (degrades over time from heat and UV). Plus paper material doesn’t like anything liquid.
Poly has basic chemical resistance. Most product labels are poly. We used poly for a long time, but year-end inventory is no fun when 25% of your tiny barcodes fail to scan.
Then there’s laminated poly. It’s uncommon and more expensive, but I can tell you it is top tier for chemical resistance. With jewelry, tags spend years of being submerged in an ultrasonic bath with a strong degreaser, steamed cleaned, wiped with IPA, acetone, etc. I switched to the TT306 Arch labels about 3 years ago and it’s been a 100% scan rate at year-end.
The other part of the equation is the glue. The TT306 don’t have adhesive on the tail (great for rubber cord jackets) and peels clean off of flat, non-porous surfaces, but they have subpar adhesion to deformable surfaces like bags.
I told Arch the problem and they sent me some non-laminated poly tags to try out (thicker laminated might not deform as well?). I’ve got them on a bag of annealing pumice in a muggy Georgia attic. I chuck the bag against the wall every time I pass by it. Two weeks in and so far so good. Peel test next week.
If you can, avoid Dymo — they have started putting DRM in their label makers that prevent you from using anything except their narrow range of overpriced labels which have compatible RFID tags inside.
Yeah, I never see Dymo stuff listed for sale or in the supported devices list for point-of-sale software.
I can’t speak too much about devices. I have a 20-year-old Datamax that I hate, but that was a long time ago. They are pretty dominant in POS applications.
My GoDEX 500 hardware is 10/10. Auto calibrate label length works every time. Printing is consistent and repeatable, so once you’ve dialed in a field layout, the POS prints perfectly (the old DataMax was on a UPS to avoid power cycles).
Their GoLabel software is 5/10 for useability. It’s finicky to layout fields on a label and you have to close and re-open the file to refresh your Excel records.
I got a cheap one from Dymo maybe a year ago, and yeah you should look elsewhere. The labels kind of suck, and don’t stick very well unless you oversize them so they can stick to themselves. If there’s something like IPA in the mix, then those labels are coming off for sure.
I guess I got in before the DRM thing started, so it’s ok just for me, but if I did this sort of thing professionally I’d get something else.
Never had enough cables to not know what I was unplugging. But it surely would be lovely to avoid the guessing game when diving into the pile of cables I have in a random box!
