Hump Day Hardware: Label Printers

We've had a label printer in our office for at least ten years. When we need to print an address label for a package, it is just one click to send it to the label printer. This is a lot faster and looks a lot better than hand addressing the package.

Our printers have always been from Dymo, but there was such an incredible price on the Brother QL-570 that I am featuring it today. You just can't beat a price under $30!

This is one of the more basic printers as it only can print one type of label at a time. There are fancier printers that support two types of labels. One other difference can be the speed in which they print labels. Since we only print one address label at a time, the speed really isn't a big issue. These printers should also work for printing postage though I admit that I've never used one for that.

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Hump Day Hardware: Brother GT-782

This is definitely the biggest piece of hardware I've ever covered in my weekly Hump Day Hardware. Not only is it big in size, it is a big development in the world of garment printing.

The headline of the press release reads "Brother International Corporation Unveils New High-End Dual Platen Inkjet Garment Printer with Independently Operated Platens Capable of Producing High Volume Production Including Dark Garments."

For those who want to see the new machine, you'll have to attend the SGIA starting today in Atlanta where it will be publicly unveiled. I was lucky enough to get this picture off of one of the flyers courtest of Direct2Shirt.

• Independently controlled dual platen and dual print-head modules – two garments can be printed virtually simultaneously and independently – for maximum productivity and the potential for greater profitability for high volume decorators


• Brother's genuine white ink and ink cartridge system provides superb output quality, and easy maintenance.


• Additional four Brother genuine industrial-grade print-heads provide industry top class printing speed for white ink applications


• Newly developed large sized ink cartridges enable to make more economical operations


• Succeeded current popular GT-541 print driver interface concept to maintain easy and extremely powerful user interface and output quality control


• With newly developed print driver software, no separate and costly RIP (raster image processor) is required. Extremely capable and flexible for operators to customize white ink print specific features


• Print driver software can directly interface most of the popular graphic application, such as Adobe Photoshop and CorelDraw for seamless white ink prints


• Succeeded the consistent and reliable GT-541 platform and additional white ink capabilities without sacrificing machine reliability and durability in an industrial environment


• Extra-large print area of 16" x 18"

Got that? Two platens so it prints faster. White ink so you can print on dark shirts. Bigger platen area. Large ink tanks. This thing is geared towards a production environment and will be priced well below other machines targeted towards that segment of the market.

As this news is really fresh, I just don't have any more details right now. But if you are in the garment printing industry, you might want to get in touch with your local dealer. If you don't know where to find a dealer, drop me a private e-mail and I'll see if I can direct you to the right person.

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Hump Day Hardware: Free Xerox Phaser Printer

I mentioned this offer over a year ago and I know we have a number of new subscribers so I wanted to tell you about it again. Xerox will send you a free color thermal wax printer! Of course, there are some stipulations. Basically you have to agree to print a certain number of pages each month and you have to buy your supplies from Xerox.

Don't get the wrong impression and think this is just some cheap printer. I have one myself and paid around $1500 to get it. Since it was my fourth Phaser printer, I'm not eligible for this offer. One reason I love these printers is because the cost per page is well below that of ink jet and laser printers. Think of thermal wax as a big block of crayon for each color. The wax is melted and sprayed just like an ink jet. It won't smear like an ink jet, but it could be scratched off.

This offer may not be for everyone, but I have a feeling there are many of you who would be perfect for this offer and the printer would be perfect for you.

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Hump Day Hardware: CD/DVD Printers and Duplicators

I remember buying my first drive to burn CDs about 13 years ago. It cost over $2000 and would take a full 70+ minutes to burn a full disc. Things have changed drastically and now that disc can be burned in under 5 minutes by a drive costing less than $50.

Some day we'll talk about disc burners, but that isn't our topic today. Most people have a burner in their computer. When it comes to labeling the discs you burn, what do you use? I bet most of you still use a Sharpie. That might work great if you are just archiving personal data, but would you present that disc to a client with pride? Probably not with pride.

As designers, we want to impress our clients as best possible with everything we provide. That's why I think it is important to have a way to properly label the discs you burn. Yes, you can buy labels that print in any printer and apply them to the discs. This is a step up from the Sharpie, but I think you can do better. In the long run, it will even cost less!

How about buying an ink jet printer that can print directly on the discs? You'll need to buy discs made for printing. They come with both white and silver surfaces. When buying them in bulk, you can find them for less than 40 cents each. For not much more you can buy printable DVDs. Then you need a printer that can print on them. One such printer is the HP Photosmart Printer shown at right. You can certainly use it for printing more than discs, but maybe you use it only for printing discs since it isn't very expensive. If you are only printing discs with it, you should be able to print quite a few before having to replace the inks. My guess is that your total cost per disc will be less than a dollar. Don't you think it would be a lot more impressive to hand your clients a printed disc than something you scribbled on with a marker?

For those who need something that prints and duplicates in bulk, you might want to explore the Epson Discproducer. We just got one in our office and love it. If you are only printing, you can print as many as 60 discs an hour. But you can also have it duplicate discs before printing. The included software is very slick and informative. The machine is fun to watch. Best of all the discs look phenomenal!

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