Latest Label Printing Technologies

Label is one of the important parts of any product. It is obligatory to stick labels on certain products. While labels serves as one of the effective marketing materials which highlights the product brand. Thus, label printing has great demands from various manufacturing industries. The printing machine industry has brought plenty of label printing machines for them. Label printers are different from regular printers. If you want to know more about label printers and technologies used in label printing, just go ahead and discover it.

About Label Printers

Label printers are specially designed to print labels from small to the size of several inches. Running sheets or rolls are used for label printers. You need not calibrate the label to print on label printer. These printers do not have problems like paper jamming. Label printers are portable devices which can be placed on the desk at ease. The market offers variety of label printing including 4 color printers. The printers are designed using different label printing technologies. Let’s see the technologies used in label printers.

Label Printing Technologies

There are two main technologies used in label printers. These technologies are widely used as per the application of label printing processes. These technologies include –

• Flexographic printing technology – It is the traditional label printing technology which uses ink and flexible relief plates for printing. The flexographic plate is made of rubber or polymer. It is raised with text or image which is attached to the cylinder. The technology uses three types of inks namely water based, UV curing and solvent based inks. These inks are low viscosity and hence facilitate fast printing. The most important feature of this technology is that you can print on any substrate including metallic films, polymer films etc. Typical applications of flexographic printers include printing on carton boxes, self-adhesive labels, shopping bags, wallpapers etc. The technology advancements include improvements in the methods of plate creation and plate materials, ink qualities. The features like enhanced printing quality, cost effectiveness and faster printing are responsible for wide use of these technology devices in the industry.
• Thermal printing technology – As the name suggests the technology uses thermal print head to print images on the label surface. There are two methods of thermal printing such as –

• Direct thermal printing technique – The heat sensitive media(paper) is used. The front side of the label is heat sensitive and back side is self-adhesive. The thermal print head prints the image as label surface area turns black. This technique is widely used for printing bar codes, name tags and price labels for various products.
• Thermal transfer technology –This technique includes a thermal transfer ribbon in between the label and thermal printer head. The heat from printing head melts the pigments on the ribbon and these pigments are absorbed by the label. This technique provides better quality and durability than direct thermal printing. Thermal transfer printers allow printing on wide variety of media like nylon, polyethylene, fabric etc.

These label printing technologies and advancements have improved the label printing speed, quality and reduced printing costs substantially.