What Printer To Use For Plastic Plant Tags?

[opalhort]

A customer of ours has sent us a bunch of his blank plant tags with the request that we print the plant names of the plants we ship to him on them. The print has to be waterproof.

The material is a flexible kind of plastic (6 x 8.3 cm and 0.21mm thick)

This is how the tags look like:

What kind of printer (cheap) would be suitable? Laser or ink?

We do have three printers, all EPSON:

EPL-6200 (Laser)

CX-3500 (ink jet)

LQ-300+II (dot matrix)

I'm to much of a coward to experiment with our current printers for fear of killing them.

Does anybody have a suggestion?

Regards

opalhort

[Crossy]

Unless the tags are designed to be printable you're going to have problems.

I suggest you try to get a printable self-adhesive vinyl film something like this :- http://www.papilio.com/inkjet%20waterproof...lm%20media.html and then stick the vinyl on the tags, all you have to do is find it in Thailand (start at the places doing vinyl banners with their big inkjet plotters).

PLEASE do not attempt to put the labels through the laser unless you KNOW they are laser printable, could be a costly mistake. A collegue put some inkjet transparancy film through the laser, turned the works into a gooey mess when it hit the fuser, the service man was not impressed

Probably worth asking your customer if his labels are designed to be printable (and what technology).

Edited September 1, 2008 by Crossy

[opalhort]

Thanks Crossy for your reply.

I also have my doubts that the tags can run through a laser printer. Our customer has no clue, only told us that they can be printed on a computer.

Is there a printer (ink jet - black only) available which can handle this type and size of material, capable of printing 50 or so tags at one time?

opalhort

[dingdongrb]

A pad printer is what you need. I have one for sale now but unfortunately it is not cheap.

A pad printer will print on rough and smooth surfaces, dries fast, and will not smear (waterproof).

[Crossy]

Yup, a pad would do the job nicely, probably a bit outside budget though

Opal, it can do no harm to try the tags in your inkjet and the old matrix printer, may need to set the thickness to 'envelope'.

[Greenside]

You've got to figure in the origination cost and fiddle with pad printing. If there's a lot of different products to ID, I'd look around for a thermal transfer label printer of the kind used for bar codes (surely the next step anyway if the customer is organised enough to request own brand labelling*), print onto high tack self adhesive clear stock and stick them on the supplied plastic tags. While the cost per label may be a bit higher, operation of the machine once set up is very simple and the operator can just dial in the number of copies required

* If the customer is doing this in house at the moment you might try getting them to pay you something of what it's costing them and thereby cover some of your expenses. Win-win.

Edited September 2, 2008 by Greenside

[opalhort]

Thanks for all your replies.

Sorry I did not respond earlier, but I've been experimenting with our printers.

Result:

Only the Epson inkjet can print the tags even though the size is smaller than the minimum specified.

Problem: The ink won't dry and would smear even after 3 days. Tried a hairdryer at lowest setting which did dry the ink but the heat warped (changed the shape of) the tag.

Sun-drying appears to be the solution. Five hours of full sun and the ink is dry and does not smear and water is no problem even if the ink has not yet fully dried.

Reimar, Barcodethai is OK but their prices are way beyond what I'm ready to spend.

If nothing else works we can always enlist our son to mark the lables in handwriting, at 0.75 Baht per tag he could make quite a bit of money, the only problem is how to motivate him.

Thanks again for your help

opalhort