Barcode Printers

A barcode printer is a very specialised bit of kit. Why can’t I just print barcodes using my regular laser printer? Well, you can, but it does not work terribly well. Cheap laser printers are not very good a printing the fine crisp lines which barcodes require. The paper is also wrong - a label printed with a barcode printer is apt to wear and smudge.

A regular printer also does not naturally know about barcodes. You require a barcode font, and even then the results are troublesome.

A regular printer is also not good at printing large volumes of barcode labels.

Using rolls of thermal barcode labels, a barcode label printer will easily create many thousands of labels very quickly. Your printing software is designed to work with a proper barcode label printer.

Typical software integration will allow you to print the exact number of labels you require for a particular delivery of stock.

A barcode label printer will print label after label with no slippage or creep between each label.

Most barcode labels are self adhesive and can easily be stuck to a product, or onto a swing tag or shelf edge label.

The size of labels varies a lot. Your barcode label printer can print on tiny labels designed for small items, e.g. rings or it can print large labels for use with shelf edge tickets.

However, a barcode label printer is not cheap. They start at several hundred pounds and easily go up to several thousand pounds for a device that hardly fits on the desk.

The increase in cost and size is related to the possible size of labels, and the number of labels you need to print. Some people need to issue hundreds, or even thousands of labels per day, and you need a large reliable machine to do this.

Trying to get by with a laser printer is a false economy.

The barcode labels themselves is a topic which can fill several pages. The rolls are not cheap. Expect to easily pay £10 a roll. This isn’t a till roll! You can get them in all sorts of shapes, and you can even get barcode labels pre-printed with you logo etc – although this will incur a significant price increase – you really need to consider carefully if this sort of thing is worthwhile unless you are a supermarket and having millions and millions made up.

The design of the barcode label is another issue. Often your EPOS supplier will charge you to make up a custom label layout, and you need to think carefully about what you want on a barcode label. You can have prices, descriptions, human readable barcodes, stock codes, batch/serial numbers, clothing sizes, all manner of information. Of course, not all of this can fit on a very small barcode label, so you need choose a large barcode label if you want lots of information displayed.

Barcode label printers are use lots of different interfaces to your computer. They are normally available in parallel, serial and USB. Although USB is the predominate interface these days, the retail hardware market has been slow to embrace the USB standard, and a lot of barcode label printers are still available in parallel, even when most PCs do not have a parallel port! This is especially important if you are considering second hand kit.

Most thermal barcode label printers have a cleaning pen or similar supplied with them. Regular cleaning is important! They will also have a number of strange keypresses related to configuration and alignment – read the manual carefully.