Organization Of The Year

I am pleased to announce that the Colorworks Label division of Epson has been named co-winner of the AIM “Organization of the Year” award.

AIM Organization of the Year

If you have never heard of this organization, AIM North America is the premier alliance for automated data capture technologies industry.  According to the AIM Press Release, “Epson has devoted their time to delivering efforts towards enhancing monochrome-only barcodes to labels that feature colors and images.” Learn more here: 

I mention this award for two reasons.  First, they deserve the recognition for the contributions to automatic identification and label printing.  And second; because I nominated them. 

Why you ask?  Below is the nomination recommend that I sent to AIM.

For the AIM 2020 Organization of the Year, I’d like to nominate Epson America for their success with on-demand color label printers.  This nomination results from Epson’s successful efforts to move from monochrome only barcodes to labels with colors and images.  Let me tell you a bit more about Epson’s generations of products and markets on-demand color printers serve.

Since the decade of the 2000’s, Epson has launched 6 generations of automatic identification, color label printers:

Catalina Printer

With the launch in the mid 2000’s, the Catalina printer became the standard for printing coupons in groceries across North America. Hundreds of thousands of these coupon printers were deployed, each producing coupons with barcodes.

 

C3400 Label Printer

At the end of 2000’s, Epson launch their first label printer; the TM-C3400. This 3-color printer was perfect for putting color marks on labels as well as barcodes. Here is a customer using the C3400 for color-codes for logistics, to reduce shipping errors:  

C831 Label Printer

In 2012, Epson launch the GP-C831; specifically designed for GHS drum labels.  This pin-fed printer produced extremely durable (in combination with a new, inkjet coated, Kimdura), large labels perfect for chemical drums and the variable red pictograms required for GHS.  Here is a good example of a customer using the C831 printer: 

C3500 Label Printer

In 2013, Epson launched the TM-C3500, the upgrade to C3400.  This 4-color printer produced higher quality images, up to 5X faster and up to 60% less ink cost than the C3400.  Here is our first customer for the C3500, using color codes on their labels: 

C7500 Label Printer

In 2015, Epson launched the TM-C7500; a high resolution fast and durable label printer.  The combination of the C7500, C3500 and C831 fit chemical companies perfectly to meet the requirements for GHS.  Here is a post of our first customer using the C7500: 

C6000 Label Printer

In 2020, Epson launched the C6000 series of color label printers, bringing many new features/capabilities to the print on-demand color label printer market; including ZPL, Peel/Present, Color Management and Network Printer Management.   Here is a post of one of our customers using this new printer: 

On-Demand color label printers are changing the way companies produce labels. All of these examples use color and barcodes to help their internal employees, customers and regulators identify quickly the correct products.  Some of the market applications include the following segments:

Chemical: As mentioned previously, GHS and the need for color, variable pictograms jump-started the market for color label printers.  With the Epson printers, chemical manufacturers could print variable data, barcodes, images and pictograms on-demand.  Because of the capability to meet the GHS requirements, Epson printers became the de-facto standard in the chemical industry. Here, our customer NIC, produces great looking GHS labels:

Manufacturing: Companies producing a large number of SKU’s or organizations needing to produce variable images for retailers such as Home Depot and Lowe’s, need to manage their label inventory.  Print on-demand color makes it possible to reduce waste and manage label inventory.  Here is a good example of how manufacturers meet this requirement: 

Food:  With the requirements for variable data and barcodes on different SKU labels, many food companies have selected print on-demand color labels as the best process to meet these requirements.  For example, Foodie Fit uses color and barcodes to make it easy for their customers to select the correct product:

Trade Show/ID Badges: With the need for not only barcodes, but variable pictures and color codes, event organizers are moving to print on-demand color ID badges.  CES, the world’s largest tradeshow uses Epson’s printers to produce these badges:

Cannabis: With the need for variable data such as THC content and Lot Numbers; as well as the importance of branding, Cannabis manufacturers have moved to print on-demand color labels.  Given the legal requirements and the large number of strains/products, cannabis companies prefer generally, on-demand color labels; including cultivators like 14er's. 

Plus. companies in many other markets are benefiting from on-demand color for their labels with barcodes.

Finally, color label printers existed prior to the launch of Epson’s printers.  And many other color label printers have come into the market.  However, Epson has focused most of their innovations on printers designed for the automated identification segment of the label market.  Their printers fit this business.

Overall, color label printing has been the largest and most important innovation to automatic identification technology since thermal printers.  And Epson’s technology for durable and affordable labels and printer hardware has made this happen.

Guy Mikel

855-962-7670

info@colorlabelsolutions.com 

Multiple UP

Although I’ve written about printing multiple up labels in the past, I had an experience recently that may help you as well.

3 UP Printing

Our customer could not only get the labels to print full-bleed correctly and also was getting “strange” white bands in the labels.  Frankly, I had no idea what caused the white bands.  Do you? Full-bleed not printing correctly; I get this question all the time.

To print the multiple up, the customer created a PDF with the 3 labels and loaded them into the BarTender foreground. 

3 UP Image

I’ve written before about printing multiple up using BarTender in the past:

https://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2020/03/printing-circles-with-c6000.html 

By creating the PDF for multiple up labels, you may have to make changes in the vertical gap measurements to get the full-bleed correct.  In addition, I suspected that the PDF would not work as well for this situation as an image file.

Given my concerns, I recommended that we change to a single label image.  Further, I recommended that we make the image 1/16^th of an inch larger on all four sides than the actual label size.

1 UP Image

Once we had the image corrected, I started to setup a new template in BarTender.  First I added the correct size of the label (3.25” x 5”) to the Epson driver along with adding .03” to both orientations.

BarTender 3 UP Settings

Second, I configured the individual labels with a template size of 1.03” x 5.28”.  We always recommend an additional .03” to both orientations when printing full-bleed.

Multiplying this size by 3 (for the 3 UP label), I had a total width of 3.09”.  With a total width of 3.28” setup in the driver, I had .19” left for the two vertical gaps. Dividing the .19” by 2, I set each gap at .095”.

BarTender 1 UP Setting

In BarTender, setting up the gap and the actual template size is easier to do than creating a single PDF.  You can easily change the vertical gap size and retest the label print.

Once I had the size of the label set correctly, I embedded the single image in the background.

BarTender Background Setup

If the file was only the actual size, I may add it as an image rather than in the background.  By having the image slightly larger than the actual size, then I find adding it to the background is easier and better.  And in fact, you can add an “overhang” as well if required.

Once I had created and saved this file, I printed it on my C6500 printer.  And interesting enough, it printed perfectly the first time:

3 Up Perfect Full-Bleed

Further, by changing the extremely large, PDF file to an image and adding it to the background rather than the foreground, the strange bands disappeared.  I’m assuming the printer spooler had issues with the large file size combined with the BarTender file.

Once I sent the redesigned BarTender template, the customer printed on his C7500G.  Although it printed without the strange white bands, the full-bleed printing was off slightly vertically.  He then made a “position” adjustment in the C7500 Printer Setting Utility; and it worked perfectly.

We sell a lot of multiple up labels; especially given the minimum width requirements of 2” in the C7500/C7500G printers.  You can print multiple up labels using a PDF; but it is a lot easier to print using a label application like BarTender.

If you follow the process described above, you can create and print multiple up labels yourself easily and quickly.  If you need multiple up labels or help using an application like BarTender to print color labels on-demand, contact us.  We’d be glad to help.

Guy Mikel

855-962-7670

info@colorlabelsolutions.com