Label printers

painfulsalad

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Hello all, just created an account because I need to understand printers quickly. I recently started a cannabis coffee company and need to know some good color printers that can make beverage labels. Any help is greatly appreciated.
 

stratman

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Welcome to the fourm, painfulsalad.

For the forum to better help. please provide more information about the labels and how you will use them. What kind of paper will you be using, are they to be water resistant, what will the label be applied onto, are they to last a long time or just applied to a disposable coffee cup that is thrown away when the beverage is drunk, etc?
 

painfulsalad

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The labels are to be applied to 8 and 12 oz glass bottles and do need to last at least a month. We are leaning toward not getting water resistant because of the price differential. They will only be put in refrigerators and should come in contact with minimal water.
 

painfulsalad

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20200214_110247.jpg
 

stratman

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How many pages of labels will you need to print a month? The "duty cycle" - pages per month - may help determine which printers are better for you.

Do you know which label paper you will be using. Please link if you do. The qualities of the paper may help determine which printers might be better.

Since condensation is a possibility when your customers cool and then drink the beverage, and they may even put them in coolers with ice, I would suggest a Pigment Ink printer because it would be water resistant compared to Dye-based inks that easily come off when exposed to water.

I wonder if the Canon Maxify would be a good choice. These are for small office environments and have generally good build quality, high duty cycles, pigment ink for water resistance, fast printing, excellent text, good paper capacity and use big capacity ink cartridges so you won't need to change out cartridges so often. You can even refill the cartridges and save more money on ink. There is a large thread on refilling the Maxify.

Just know these are not photo printers. They are business printers with excellent test and good image quality for its intended use. The labels in your image should look good.

https://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/catalog/maxify-small-business-printers

I have the Maxify MB5120 which has all the whistles and bells including both auto-duplex printing and scanning. You may not need those functions but the MB5xxx series has the giant 19 ml ink XL cartridges versus 12 ml XL cartridges for the MB2xxx series. More ink = fewer cartridge changes.

Cost for OEM Canon PGI-2200 XL cartridges are $27 for 19 ml C/M/Y colors and $37 for a triple-sized 70 ml Black currently on Amazon.

Again, you can save money if you refill the OEM cartridges once you attach an ARC chip (sold on AliExpress IIRC) and get aftermarket ink (for example from Precision Colors out of Canada).

If you can, which can be dicey these days, go to a brick and mortar store that has the Maxify on display and print out a test or demonstration page. If you have a the label paper you are going to use, take a sheet or two of that and use it for your test.

Hopefully others will join in to give you more recommendations, like maybe the "tank" models from Epson and Canon. The printer are a little costly up front but the refill ink is relatively inexpensive. Note that the Epson EcoTank uses all pigment ink while the Canon MegaTank uses Pigment Black for text but Dye-based ink for the other colors. Here is an old but decent introduction to these supertank printers:

https://www.consumerreports.org/printers/supertank-printers-canon-megatank-epson-ecotank/
 

randy11a

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Supertank printers - is the only way how to not get bankruptcy while printing labels in industrial scale. Talking of printing, I've been recently looking for good label printers and blank labels as well, and maybe the only place where I could find dozens of options to choose from is here ( https://labelbasic.ca/wine-labels/ ). This website offers really nice assortment of labels.
 
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