Zebra Thermal Label Printers

[thisislife]

I have just had a call from the office saying our Brother printer is making funny noises and not printing. Its been on the blink now for a few weeks so it came as no suprise.

Whilst the office are busy trying to fix it, im trying to think of a better solution for what we have. We currently print about 150 A4 sheets of labels (4 per page) per day. The labels are thicker than normal paper and so this is why i think the Brother is struggling to pick them up.

Becasue we are printing labels i have been considering getting a thermal label printer. I have had a small Zebra one in the past and it seemed bullet proof. I spoke to someone at "barcode warehouse" and they suggested a mid range model for printing around 600 individual labels per day.

We currently merge data from Excel into a template we have set up on Word and then print. Does anyone know if the Zebra printer will operate in the same sort of way? Has anyone got good experience with these thermal label printers?

Help needed!

Many thanks

[11SJC]

very good machines last for ever


talk to brian in my office he might be able to sort a deal on one 0800 132400

[influential]

Yep, have used Zebra printers before in a warehouse bar-code printing environment and they were excellent. Decent ZPL (programming language) allows easy-to-code bar codes etc.

[sgrimshaw]

+1 for Zebra, found them to be bullet proof - even when running a full speed (which is pretty impressive BTW)

[Stupeo]

+1 here for Zebra printers but i would highly recommend Intermec printers - very stable and cheap'ish. We used over 100 of them in a very dusty warehouse on my last job and they didnt miss a beat.

Matt

[thisislife]

Thanks for the advice, I am going to go ahead with the purchase of a Zebra S4M label printer. Does anyone know of some decent software to use for this printer, currently we mail merge labels into a word document before printing on label sheets but surely it would be better to use some designated software to print labels with a Zebra printer? Thanks for the help.

[rossjlee]

Zebra are the best thermal label printer brand out there. You may have sorted a S4M out from elsewhere but we are their largest reseller in the UK so I'd love to help if possible. Our online price should be competitive:

http://www.thebarcodewarehouse.co.uk/Products/zebr...

With regard to the software, if you're going down the Zebra route you may as well use their own label design package:

http://www.thebarcodewarehouse.co.uk/Accessories/z...

Having said that if you look at the BarTender software on our website, that is our best-selling brand as there are different versions for different applications.

The only other thing you would need then is labels which we have an assortment of online or could manufacturer custom ones to your spec if required.

If you have any questions one of our sales team would be happy to help - 0800 043 6655

[thisislife]

Barcode Warehouse you must of heard your ears burning when you replied to this post!

Ok the advice is great and im alot clearer on things now but the only question i have remaining is can you merge data from an Excel CSV into one of the mentioned label template programs? Our orders are downloaded from our site in CSV format so its imperitive that the label program works with this.

Many thanks for all the help so far.

Regards

[jamoor]

good printers.
There si a company on ebay Northern label systems that are exellent and cheap.

I bought one for £280 and he came to my office installed it etc!

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Northern-Label-Systems

[rossjlee]

I must admit I only quickly read your post while I was at work so missed the 'barcode warehouse' part. Glad you found us!

Any 'professional' label design package such as Zebra Designer Pro or BarTender Po includes industry-standard ODBC link for linking to databases.

If you ever come unstuck our technical support is free so we're always there to help.

Ross

[grumbas]

Great bits of kit, take a hell of a lot of abuse and just keep going.

I've used them a lot merging from MS Access databases which works really well.

I don't see why you couldn't setup a special paper size in Word and use the standard mail-merge functionality - might take a bit of time to setup but once you've got the template very easy in future.

[rossjlee]

Grumbas is correct

All printers come with Windows drivers so you can print labels in Word with no issues. It may be trickier to set up bit would be free.

The benefit of buying a label design package is really ease of use. Just as you would choose Adobe creative suite for design over MS Paint...it's got a WYSIWYG editor, drag and drop interface etc. Only really worth it if you're going to use a lot of the advanced features like adding barcodes or will be creating lots of templates.

You could always download a demo version first to see if you like it:

http://www.thebarcodewarehouse.co.uk/help/software...

[thisislife]

Hi again,
We bought a second hand Zebra Z4M plus which is in good nick and came with "BarTender" barcode printing software?

The probem is we odnt have aclue how to set the thing up. We are running windows vista and there doesnt seem to be a driver on the Zebra website to support vista.

Spent about an hour fiddling around with it but to no avail. Also the printer its self is coming up with a error message saying "error condition ribbon out". We dont need to use a ribbon as we are using thermal labels.

For all the time its taking messing around with it i think i may just end up calling a local printer shop and see if they can send someone out to install it. Unless anyone here has a better idea?

Regards