stevenje
Senior Member
- Location
- Yachats Oregon
I am looking to purchase a label maker for marking junction boxes, cover plates and equipment. Any suggestions on what to buy? Thanks
Strathead
3M tapes and the like cost about four times the Brother TZ tapes and are not as readily available. Why would anyone who only uses a label maker occasionally pay so much to use one?
You make it sound as if the Brother units are cheap junk. They have a full range to choose from. For the amount of labeling I do the PT1400 is perfect for me. It will print on flexible tape designed to wrap wire, it will print rotated for wire, and it will print 1" tape, so the only thing it doesn't print is heat shrink tape. It uses the Brother TZ tapes if you check there is a large of variety of tapes to choose from.
Rick
Regardless, don't worry about which one you buy, worry about the cost of labels. I recently had the 3M rep in the office. He was willing to give us the label makers Pl100 200 or 300 if we bought x number of label rolls. Not an excessive amount either. He knew we would buy more. Check in to it. Those labellers are far more versatile than the cheap Brother ones, since you can make cable labels etc.
I've got a Brother labeler the shop gave me, it works great except it consistently wastes about an 1" of label at the beginning of every label.
Is there anything different between the 3M printers you have and the Rhino printers by Dymo? The lineup looks exactly the same. Do you know if the tape is compatible between them? I find the Rhino tape to be easy to find and priced reasonably. I own two Rhino 5200 machines and I have used tons of the Flexible Nylon labels for wire labels. Unfortunately, I have had tons of them fail in environments, with very little heat. The glue gets all gooey, and it unravels off the cable. Talk about a pain in the butt. I tried working with their tech department, but they stopped responding to emails. I now use Brady laser printer labels, which are by far the most robust cable labels I have ever used.
Regardless, don't worry about which one you buy, worry about the cost of labels. I recently had the 3M rep in the office. He was willing to give us the label makers Pl100 200 or 300 if we bought x number of label rolls. Not an excessive amount either. He knew we would buy more. Check in to it. Those labellers are far more versatile than the cheap Brother ones, since you can make cable labels etc.