Roll label printer

[fuzzy_cam]

Hello S101-

Does everyone outsource their roll labels or sticker printing? We are currently producing a lot of hard hat decals and small "stickers" on our 64" Mutohs, weeding, trimming, stacking and packaging by hand. I am looking to either outsource all of these orders or keep them in-house with a roll label printer.

Does anyone have any experience with either an Epson ColorWorks or Primera LX2000, or can recommend another brand? These are the prominent ones I have found online. Ideally, the printer would be able to accommodate multiple sizes and shapes of blanks and be able to print from Flexi.

Thanks in advance
Cam

 

[Jburns]

I have a primera printer - good for interior stuff or consumer goods.- they are paper based so I wouldn't use on hard hats. - it uses its own software called bartender.

 

[fuzzy_cam]

I have a primera printer - good for interior stuff or consumer goods.- they are paper based so I wouldn't use on hard hats. - it uses its own software called bartender.

I appreciate your reply! I assume this would be okay for labeling bottles and such, which we do some of, but I can't justify it for just that. We need something that can stand up outside, for some time at least.

 

[SignMeUpGraphics]

The Primeras are great for bottle labelleing... however after we got one we still found it was nearly 4x the price to make a label compared to print/cut on cheap mono vinyl.
I guess there's convenience in that you can print a roll and just hand it to the client, but ours don't mind the cost savings by just rolling up a 54" roll of contour cut prints.

 

[Glavin_ID]

We sell a TON of roll labels, both blank and pre-printed. Most of the pre-printed come from either Discount Labels http://www.discountlabels.com/ or Liberty Marking Systems https://www.libertymarking.com/. We have done the research and found that the only way to be profitable on a large scale in this competitive market is to spend $300-$400K on either digital or flexi printing equipment and cutters. All the small format roll label printers are great if you have a niche where you can command the higher price. That said, we mostly sell durable labels in industrial applications.

 

[SlikGRFX]

What cutter are you using? Maybe look at automating part of the production process. A Summa S Class would handle a full roll of stickers including contour cut and through cut into individual decals. All you need to do is pick them out of the basket and package them. This would be more a versatile solution than a stand alone label printer.

 

[AGCharlotte]

Afinia makes a decent setup for "low cost" entry. We looked at the L801 (which I think has been replaced by the L901) and their cutter solution to put in here and demo'd it for a bit. Printer worked great, the cutter/laminator piece was a bit more of a bear to operate. We ended up not going that route (mainly because our volume isn't there yet). I just looked at the printer pricing is reasonable, but the cutter solution is pretty dang expensive.

The printer piece allows you to buy pre-diecut labels pretty easily to run through there, so keeping it to standard sizes would allow you to have a decent selection of what you can sell.

 

[White Haus]

You will need to invest in a dedicated roll thermal printer for labels on rolls. Direct thermal and thermal transfer are great for printing barcoding and shipping labels, but you'll need an inkjet roll or laser roll label printer to print high-quality label rolls.

That's cute. How much do you sell those for?

 

[Goatshaver]

I think it honestly depends on quantity you're. I bought a roll label printer with rewinder and roll slitter over a year ago and still have yet to run a single job on it. (most of my work is short run few hundred to 1000) and most are all different shapes and sizes. To give you an idea I paid $9000 for the printer and rewinder alone, in order to be able to do lamination and custom cuts, that piece of equipment was about $14k.

I found that unless you doing several thousands per run you'll probably still come out ahead using your wide format machine or just subbing it out.