Thermal printers

[BrokenBiker]

Anyone got one? Any good?

Fed up with extortionate printer cartridges, I don't print anything in colour and its pretty much all postage labels, drawings/templates from fusion and the odd letter.

Seen a few really compact thermal printers, some cheap, some mot so cheap, some advertised as being able to print from mobile too which would be nice but I have no experience with them at all.

I assume they need special paper?

 

[Hood]

No experience but I suspect they will basically just be like till receipts and that may then be an issue if you want the printed paper for long term as thermal printed till receipts tend to fade after a while.

 

[JOEPRO]

I bought a good used colour laser copier scanner a4 a3 from an office. £250 IIRC correctly and it came with a full set of toners so I've never had to buy any in my home usage level. Never missed a beat - I've had it about 12 years now

 

[Greeves246]

Have a laser printer now. Toner cartridge really cheap. Best thing I ever did was scrapping the inkjet printer.

 

[m_c]

I wouldn't use one for drawings or letters, as thermal paper isn't great for such things.
I'm not even sure you'd get a reasonable cost one capable of A4 size for sensible money, or what the cost of A4 width thermal paper would be.

I've got 3.
One is a Brother P-Touch that now gets used for packaging labels (max print width is 80mm IIRC), and the other two are used for 4"x6" postage labels. Well one is still used (A fairly generic Chinese one from Amazon that takes concertina folded labels that you can buy in sensible quantities), and a currently unused Zebra which needs label rolls, but you have to buy the rolls in boxes of 12 (IIRC) to get them at a sensible price, and by the time I get through two or three rolls, the rest have gone bad and don't print well.

 

[ajlelectronics]

Anyone got one? Any good?

Not for anything important, heat and time will destroy the image and the paper doesn't come in A4 sizes normally.

If low printing cost, convenience and reliability is key, then a laser is the answer. You are only down the road from me and I have a spare, fully working colour laser printer that would suit you for £100. It is a Xerox 6600DN and has plenty of toner left. It takes compatibles if you need to refill.

The other beauty of lasers is that you can go as long as you like without printing and the next one will be as good as the last. No more head cleaning and unblocking.

 

[Martin-Sy]

We used to design them into some of our medical instruments. They use thermally sensitive paper, so yes, its special paper.
The print head is a single line of microscopic heaters with some digital logic to make it look line a shift register.
You shift in the data for a single line of pixels, 'fire' the heads which applies the power and heats the pixels that are ON, shift the paper along one pixel along and repeat.
Great for quick B&W images, graphs, text (eg service till receipts) etc, but the paper ages and the image fades (as @Hood has said).

So you're fed up with ink-jets. Yes, we were too and replaced our Epson cartridge ink-jet with a Canon GX4050.
The Canon is still an ink jet but uses ink in bottles and so far (touch wood) it's been great. Still on the original ink bottles and just coming up to a year old.
Replacement inks from Canon about £75. I don't know how that compares with toner cartridges for a laser.

 

[My Old Landy]

We have a new Munbyn for 6x4 postage labels. It also does round labels etc. The Brother thermal we have is about 10 years old and still going strong. The labels are costly though so we got the Munbyn as much cheaper consumables.
It's all stickers with us though, I haven't seen any rolls of paper that are suitable (not that I have looked!)

 

[m_c]

We have a new Munbyn for 6x4 postage labels. It also does round labels etc. The Brother thermal we have is about 10 years old and still going strong. The labels are costly though so we got the Munbyn as much cheaper consumables.
It's all stickers with us though, I haven't seen any rolls of paper that are suitable (not that I have looked!)

You might be interested in this source for Brother compatible labels - https://www.mr-label.co.uk/brother-compatible-labels-306-c.asp
If you do buy them there, check that you can split your existing holders as they're glued/melted together, and I couldn't split any of mine. And remember the holders are keyed so the printer knows what type of label is installed, so don't go mixing the holders!

 

[My Old Landy]

You might be interested in this source for Brother compatible labels - https://www.mr-label.co.uk/brother-compatible-labels-306-c.asp
If you do buy them there, check that you can split your existing holders as they're glued/melted together, and I couldn't split any of mine. And remember the holders are keyed so the printer knows what type of label is installed, so don't go mixing the holders!

I tried and failed already. I have a supply of three sizes but once they are gone I will consign it to the freebie section!

 

[m_c]

I tried and failed already. I have a supply of three sizes but once they are gone I will consign it to the freebie section!

Mr Label sell the holders, and I've never had a problem with them.

 

[Jack_K]

Thermal printers are really nice for labels but not for much else. Get a laser printer instead of an ink jet.

 

[jmp49]

For general printing, laser is the way to go and never have a ink cartridge dry up again.
Not sure why you need a4 thermal printing, unless its just to get one machine to cover it all. I've used the avery label sheets in a laser printer but after a few fun times extracting labels that had detchaed inside, for label printing I use a dymo 450 thermo label printer that takes little reels of sticky labels, and generic consumeables that fit it are available though I've never used the non dymo branded ones. I leave it on my workshop pc and have a template set up to hit print on it and a completed sticky label pops out the printer , just peel it off the backing and ready to go. I bought it secondhand off ebay a few years ago and it came with a box of oem label refils in various sizes and I'm still chomping my way through them.

 

[Tom O]

Buy a laser printer you won’t look back.

 

[Tom O]

Buy a laser printer you won’t look back.

 

[ajlelectronics]

Buy a laser printer you won’t look back.

I found that to be true when I took the mirrors off my car.

 

[Tom O]

Probably a good thing because as you are looking in the mirror chuckling at the person shaking their fist your not watching the road ahead.