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Thread: Anyone have a label maker that they think is the bomb-diggety?

  1. #1
    mAdminstrator Random's Avatar
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    Question Anyone have a label maker that they think is the bomb-diggety?

    Post up, if so. I'm looking to be super anal and label my tool drawers. I'm sure it'll come in handy for other things, too.
    Whoomah!

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    I have a label maker. Whether it's the bomb diggety or not is probably subjective. Actually, I have two - both Brother P-Touches, one is a 1280 and the other a 1010. If you want 1/2" tall black lettering on a white background, I got you. If you don't, you're welcome to buy whatever tape you want and borrow either or both printers.

    Alternatively, I have a pair of Dymo Labelwriters - USB to a computer. I only use one of them. The other has been in a closet for about three years. If you want paper labels, black on white, you're welcome to it. I'm sure I will never use it again.

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    Member Member 21Kid's Avatar
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    Write it up on the fly!!!

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    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    I wouldn't have bothered to reply if you hadn't added the bomb-diggety part.

    For what you're doing, probaby the cheapest thing Office Depot sells is fine, but back in the '90s I was in outside sales and one of our lines was Kroy printers. Their "Industrial Tape", if the same as I remember, was indeed the bomb-diggety. We tested it (informally, not in a lab) in many ways and the stuff is great. We put labels on the warehouse floor and they stayed there and readable for a long time. Hot, cold, spills, etc. - the stuff is awesome. Their label printers aren't cheap though - overkill for labeling jars and boxes and whatever in a home garage, IMO.

    For the over-achiever with a fat wallet:

    http://www.kroy.com/industrial/index.htm

    I'm familiar with what is now called the K5100. The long-ago version I knew looked just like the current one, though most certainly less capable than this new one. It would do multi-line text in different sizes, subscript, superscript, barcodes, had a memory, etc. Quality product, at least back in the mid-90s. These things weighed a ton - tough to hold in one hand while typing with the other for long periods, but you could throw them down without hurting them.

    Last edited by George; February 10th, 2014 at 10:44 AM.

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    Are those things the impact-type printers I remember fondly from early networking days?

  6. #6
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    The Kroy printers were/are thermal transfer to colored ribbon. In the pic above, the black part at the top is the tape cartidge. You turned a knob on the top to change ribbons and the whole black thing lifted off. You could change colors in seconds.

    You could hook them to a PC and load data from Lotus 1-2-3 or whatever back then. You could load in names and numbers or whatever sort of like importing info from one database to another and then the printer would start spitting out labels with not much effort on the part of the user. Very cool devices. The cartridges were expensive and came in lots of colors - black on white, orange on black, green on yellow, etc.

    It's the old disposable razor blade business model.

    As for me, I use Sharpie marker on blue painters tape for the very few things I have labeled in my garage.

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    Ah, so it works like the P-Touch that I have. I like those things. I don't use them all that often, but they sure do make nice labels when I need to. For a long time, the worst aspect of them was that they used six AA batteries and slaughtered them quickly, but last year I divorced an AC adapter from some equipment we were chucking at the office and rewired it to work with the labeler. Although AC power is less convenient than battery power, not killing six AA batteries every 20-30 minutes of use makes the P Touch much more affordable to use.

    I miss the clicky plastic labelers we had as a kid - I thought that Kroy was such a thing. I used to love playing with them, but sadly they have no place in 2014.

  8. #8
    High Plains Luddite George's Avatar
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    Dymo labelers! Yup, those were fun and the labels fell off at the slightest excuse. Someone made a typeface of that some years back, and I seem to remember Bart Simpson had one in the episode in which little Timmy fell down the well. As I recall, Sting showed up because he heard Timmy O' Toole was a fan and this was the first time we saw Groundskeeper Willie tear off his shirt.





    How's THAT for an off-topic thread hijack? I'd say it's one of my best yet.

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