Dreamy Labels

Dream City Cannabis’ (http://www.dreamcitycannabis.com/)  philosophy is simple:  Only the Best.  Whether selecting their flowers, wax, cartridges or distillate, customers familiar with Dream City Cannabis know that they are getting high quality products. The company harvests cannabis flowers from a wide variety of strains, always testing new lines of material in order to offer a rotating selection of flavors and experiences. Their oil products are also in demand, as they are processed purely from the flower of the plant.  Overall, Dream City strives to deliver the highest quality cannabis products in the growing market.

Late 2015, Dream City decided to begin printing color labels on-demand.  According to Matthew of Dream City, “Customers purchase our products initially based on the colors of our labels and containers.  In our retail partner stores, it’s important that our packaging and labels convey our product positioning as the best cannabis available. Therefore, we needed to find a label printing solution to print great looking labels on demand that also gave us the flexibility to meet our retail partner demands.”

After our discussion, I printed sample labels for Dream City on a C7500 printer:

C7500 Sample Labels

After our discussion, Dream City purchased a C7500 and gloss labels.  Matthew says, “Our C7500 has become a critical component to our business.  We like the speed, durability and reliability of the printer.  We’ve printed tens of thousands of labels already with no hiccups.  In fact, the only issues we have are operator errors. Plus, we like the colors produced by the printer.  They are very precise, including the fine print required by the regulatory agencies on our small labels.”

Dream City C7500 Printed Label

“We print the same size label both in portrait and landscape to fit our specific products.  The flexibility is great and important for our on-demand label printing requirements”, says Matthew.

C7500 Labels-Landscape

C7500 Labels-Portrait

To create the label designs, the designer for Dream City uses Illustrator and saves the file as a PDF.  To make product specific changes (i.e. change the variable data), Matthew uses Acrobat.  Two other options to this system are as follows:

*  Create form fillable PDF’s in Illustrator or Acrobat in the spots where you want to add the variable data.

*  Use an application such as BarTender (http://www.seagullscientific.com/downloads/label-software/barcode-label-printing-software-download/) to create a label template, adding the variable data at print-time or pulling the data from a database.

C7500 Printed Labels

Moving forward, Dream City is considering purchasing on-site service for the C7500 to minimize any potential downtime.  Under the on-site service program, a technician will arrive next business day when Epson is contacted by 3:00 Eastern time.  On-Site service costs $1,029 per year, includes the first year, and covers all costs.

For customers who want to print beautiful labels reliably, the C7500 is a great option; especially for manufacturers in the new cannabis markets.  Contact us if we can help you begin printing color labels on-demand for your cannabis or other products.

Guy Mikel

855-962-7670

info@colorlabelsolutions.com 

Purchase your printers, labels, software for on-demand cannabis labels here:

https://colorlabelsolutions.com/shop/ 

C7500 Surprise

In the past, I’ve been surprised by the release of new drivers.  Look at some of my posts.

C3500:  http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2015/03/c3500-surprise.html

C831: http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2014/11/gp-c831-surprise.html

This week, again, I was surprised by the release of a new driver for the C7500. 

C7500G Printer/Firmware

Let me tell you about my experience with the new C7500 driver/firmware.

While deploying a new C7500G, I download the driver from the Epson America Website: 

https://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/support/supDetail.jsp?UseCookie=yes&infoType=Overview&oid=281787

At the time, Epson had only one version of the driver available; the latest 1.2.0.0.  Now you’ll find two different drivers; versions 1.2.0.0 and 1.1.0.0:

C7500G Driver Versions

After downloading and installing the driver, I received an error message:

C7500G Driver Version Error

After reading this error message, I understood the driver had been updated; but I did not have access to the latest firmware.  Although I got the error message, I went ahead to see if the new driver worked with the existing firmware. But I could not get the changes in the driver to save. The driver reverted to the defaults no matter the settings.

I contacted Epson to get the latest firmware to move forward on my install.  Typically, Epson has not made firmware easily available.  After making several phone calls, I found the location of the new firmware.  Once downloaded and installed, I started printing full-bleed on gloss poly labels perfectly.  And Epson updated their website to add back the previous version.

Upon returning to my office, I installed the new driver and new firmware on my C7500.  After installing, I knew immediate the primarily change in the driver; the new capability to run continuous labels.

C7500G Continuous Label Setting

Now users can print continuous labels; and then finish them in a second operation.  I installed continuous labels in my C7500; and immediately printed labels.

C7500 Continuous Printed Labels

In the printed label above, you’ll see the gaps before and after the label.  In Epson’s software, it does not eliminate the gaps.  According to Epson, these gaps will be reduced or eliminated in future software releases.  As a comparison, the Neuralabel 300x offers this capability:

300x Boarderless Printing

With the capability for continuous, users can digitally print and then finish (die-cut and laminate) labels that rival the print quality of very expensive presses used by professional printers.  By adding a raster image processor, users can gain improved control of colors and images.  Read more about what Epson and Wasatch are launching shortly: http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2016/07/continuous-rip-coming-this-fall.html

And systems as mentioned in my recent summary of Label Expo make finishing affordable and easy to do. http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2016/09/label-expo-2016.html

If you need professional looking labels, or are a professional printer who wants to offer short run digital label printing capability, you should contact us to discuss continuous label printing and finishing systems.  We’ll get you producing beautiful labels; quickly, easily and affordability. 

Guy Mikel

855-962-7670

info@colorlabelsolutions.com 

iPhone Printed Color Labels

Every week, someone asks for label printers with an MAC driver option. Many individuals design labels on their MAC; and want to print directly from their computer.  But not every day, do I get requests to print directly from an iPhone.

No label printers that I know have an AirPrint wireless option.  So the question I had to determine was how to print from an Apple iPhone to a Windows driver.

Based on a Google search, I found PrintCentral Pro from Eurosmart:  https://mobile.eurosmartz.com/products/printcentralpro.html

These guys claim to print to any network printer.  So I had to see if it was possible.  First, I had to download and install the PrintCentral Pro application onto our iPhone:

PrintCentral Pro

Using this application alone, I could not get it to work.  If I would have had available the CAB XC Two Tone printer with the wireless option, https://www.cab.de/en/marking/label-printer/xc-series/, it may have printed directly.

Second, I had to install the WePrint application on the computer with the Windows driver: http://mobile.eurosmartz.com/downloads.html.  WePrint runs in the background; and I configured this application to print from an email routed to the printer.

WePrint

Third, I had to open the PDF as a webpage in Safari.  In this situation, a GHS application was producing the label on-demand as a PDF. To open, I emailed the link containing the PDF to myself; and then opened it up in Safari.

GHS Label In Safari

Fourth, I needed to configure Safari to print via PrintCentral Pro once the page was opened.  In Safari, I had to go to the “MORE” option at the bottom of the of the screen and toggle “PCL” to “On”.  Once on, I found a “Print with PCL” option at the bottom of the screen.

PCL Print

When I selected PCL printing, I needed to select the correct printer.  Having many different printer drivers installed, I had to narrow down my selection as well as configure the  printer settings.  As I said earlier, you may want to test printing direct from PrintCentral Pro; and not install WePrint until necessary.  I do believe it should be possible with the correct configuration.

PrintControl Pro

Once I selected “Print”, I got a 4” x 6” formatted print output just like the design of the PDF.

iPhone Printed GHS Label

As I needed to test using an iPhone, I used PrintCentral Pro and WePrint.  If I was using my Nexus 6P, I would have used Google Cloud Print instead.  You may want to test using Google’s application first depending on the devices you plan to use.

Printing color labels on-demand from a mobile device to a Windows driver should work for many yard and warehousing applications.  Contact us if you need to print color labels on-demand and on-the-fly!

Guy Mikel

855-962-7670

info@colorlabelsolutions.com