1 inch label makers

newbury · Mar 3, 2018

Since I went from a few toolboxes, with none having more than 3 drawers, and LOTS of tools scattered around on benches, in buckets etc. to many toolboxes

with a lot of drawers I've been looking for a labeling method so when I tell SWMBO or offspring to look for a tool like the small vice grips they might be able to find it within a day without going through every drawer.

So I've tried magnetic labels, they fall off, and handwritten labels are ok but I'd like something neater.

I've looked at the Brother PTD600 , it'll do 1" wide labels which is my main criteria.

Anybody else use one? Any other suggestions for a label maker I can hook up to w/ my laptop and print 1" wide adhesive labels?

Thomas · Mar 3, 2018

I have but not 1" label tho,and labels are still sticking all these years.

JRobyn · Mar 3, 2018

We use one of the 1/2" tape Brothers for lots of stuff. The font is selectable size, and you can get black-on-clear, white-on-clear, black-on-white, and white-on-black tapes. Really easy to see from quite a distance in the large fonts.

4get gto · Mar 3, 2018

I have one very similar to the one you mentioned. Your going to find out the label maker is the cheap part of labeling. Tapes expensive.

GaryM · Mar 3, 2018

I have a P-Touch, but it only goes to 3/4" I believe. Works great and can be hooked to the PC via USB if desired. You can save the label files on the unit itself. Also will print labels for wires and cable marking.

Wagtail · Mar 3, 2018

I use a "DYMO" LabelWriter 450. Bought it at an electronics/stationary store years ago and it still works great (including software updates, which are few & far between). Used one during various 'shore postings' whilst in the Navy for addressing letters & correspondence.

It still comes in handy during Christmas card season (multiple return addresses, etc...)

Mace Canute · Mar 3, 2018

newbury said:
...... Any other suggestions for a label maker I can hook up to w/ my laptop and print 1" wide adhesive labels?

If you have a printer, how about something along these lines? I've also seen similar sheets advertised elsewhere that they claim are for inkjet printers.

Laser Labels, Printable Laser Labels in Stock - ULINE.ca - Uline

MossRoad · Mar 3, 2018

We had a p touch industrial labeler at my old job. It did 1" tape. They stuck well and never came off. In fact, they were hard to remove. So consider that. Also, as someone else mentioned, the replacement tapes can be expensive. Also, they offer colored tape, and clear tape. Very handy for certain applications.

MossRoad · Mar 3, 2018

They have white ink on clear and black ink on clear. Both are handy.

newbury · Mar 3, 2018

4get gto said:
I have one very similar to the one you mentioned. Your going to find out the label maker is the cheap part of labeling. Tapes expensive.

Yup, like razor blades and razors.

Mace Canute said:
If you have a printer, how about something along these lines? I've also seen similar sheets advertised elsewhere that they claim are for inkjet printers.

Laser Labels, Printable Laser Labels in Stock - ULINE.ca - Uline

I've done that for decades, but I wanted something I could easily carry around and use with or without a computer. This can run on AA batteries which I always have on hand.

MossRoad said:
We had a p touch industrial labeler at my old job. It did 1" tape. They stuck well and never came off. In fact, they were hard to remove. So consider that. Also, as someone else mentioned, the replacement tapes can be expensive. Also, they offer colored tape, and clear tape. Very handy for certain applications.

Yeah, I figure I may require two rolls of tape just to get started with the toolboxes I showed, that will cost almost as much as the PT-D600 itself.

Further thought - it seems they have some labels designed for labeling cables. There goes another several rolls!

countrybumpkin · Mar 3, 2018

P touch here also, still looks good many years later.

crazyal · Mar 3, 2018

We have them at work. I do believe they are P touch brand. They look more like a handheld radio. They do 1" tape and work fine. As others have said the tape adds up quickly. Plus, at least with the style we have, it's kind of wasteful. You loose an inch or so when it ejects it out. You loose another inch or so because it leaves plenty of extra tape on each side of the text. It has several symbols along with arrows. Being a work thing I've never bothered to see if something could be done to stop the wasting of the tape. At 26' long a couple of inches doesn't seam like much but when you make a number of small tags when you are done and you see a small pile of cut offs and realize you paid over a $1 a foot you start to look to see just how much you are throwing away. Maybe the newer or more expensive models are better.

Rowdy Redneck · Mar 3, 2018

I have a Zebra thermal printer that I absolutely love. It is great for cranking out tons of labels for dirt cheap. It is compact, but unfortunately does require a computer.

countrybumpkin · Mar 3, 2018

Make several labels all as one and cut them apart yourself if your doing a bunch. Saves some waist.

newbury · Mar 3, 2018

crazyal said:
We have them at work. I do believe they are P touch brand. They look more like a handheld radio. They do 1" tape and work fine. As others have said the tape adds up quickly. Plus, at least with the style we have, it's kind of wasteful. You loose an inch or so when it ejects it out. You loose another inch or so because it leaves plenty of extra tape on each side of the text. It has several symbols along with arrows. Being a work thing I've never bothered to see if something could be done to stop the wasting of the tape. At 26' long a couple of inches doesn't seam like much but when you make a number of small tags when you are done and you see a small pile of cut offs and realize you paid over a $1 a foot you start to look to see just how much you are throwing away. Maybe the newer or more expensive models are better.

The ones I had when I worked would leave the blank areas, which could be used for annotation with a sharpie. Blank space does seem to be a common complaint about all the labelmakers.

MossRoad · Mar 4, 2018

The one we had only wasted tape at the start of a cut. So if you just didn't do the cut, and printed the next label, it wouldn't advance the waste area between each label. Then you had to cut them apart manually, but it saved a lot of tape. At least, that's how I recalled it.

MossRoad · Mar 4, 2018

I just used the 1" wide tape for labels. The labeler allowed me to rotate the text 90 degrees. Let's say the cable is X00345. Just tell it to print 90 degrees: Fit to width: Print 6 rows of the same text: Leave 1" tail.

That would give you about a 1.5-2" long label, 1" wide. Put the blank tail on the cable first, and wrap it around the wire a couple times. You end up with the text being readable around the wire from any angle. Really nice.

Fatter wire? Leave a longer tail, or print it all. It doesn't matter because there's no ink savings no matter how long of a label you print because the "ink" is the tape itself. You can't waste ink. Or time. So just print as many lines of text you want on the label. Works great as a cable wrap label.

MossRoad · Mar 4, 2018

Here's a link to several ways to reduce waste between labels and cuts from the Brother website....

Why does a one inch piece of blank tape feed prior to every label that prints out and can this tape waste be eliminated?

newbury · Mar 4, 2018

Well I went ahead and got the Brother PTD 600 and about 6 rolls of different tapes from Amazon. Hope to let y'all know how it works out.

newbury · Mar 6, 2018

Well my Brother PTD 600 was delivered.
First impressions - It is possible to use "manually" but not easy to get "fancy with" manually. It must have a thousand different templates and patterns. I just wanted some 1 inch wide labels.

I found it easy to print a 2 line label with different fonts manually. The cartridge is easy to swap. The software is kludgy and doesn't seem to have all the options that are available on the keyboard. The "graphic" interface is poor, I couldn't figure out how to dynamically assign cut lines. But it's real easy to just take the tape out and snip it by hand. So for the first about 20 labels I would copy the text I needed, put it in the frame, then just printed them out in a string and snipped them with scissors.