Label printer issue resolved sort of

[waynestewart]

I’ve been printing plastic labels with a Brother label printer and paper labels with a Dymo LabelWriter 450. All was good but then I was looking at the Dymo LabelWriter 450 Duo which had 2 parts to it, one for paper and the other for plastic. I got interested because it’d do graphics on the plastic labels so I ordered one. I stuck the starter labels in it and it worked well then I did a bit of plastic label printing. A couple of weeks later I needed to do some paper labels and ran into feed and printing problems. I mucked around with it a bit then pulled out my old printer which did the job. Last night I wanted to print a couple of labels so I thought I’d look into the issue. I opened it up and checked the feed and sensors and found the problem.

Dymo and compatible labels have a hole that the labeler uses to know when to stop feeding at. The Dymo brand labels now have black bars printed on the back that the new 450 Duo senses. As far as I can see the black bars only purpose is to keep you from using aftermarket labels, they work well in the older 450. Since I can buy 6 rolls of the compatible labels for the price of the Dymo labels they must be making a hefty profit on them.

For now I want to still print plastic labels with the Duo so I’ll also keep the Dymo starter labels in it and use my old 450 for the compatible labels. When I need to resupply I expect they should have the black bars on the compatible labels too.