Recommendations for Lettering
Manual Lettering:
With lightfast Indian ink; if the labels are covered with a foil. Indian inks are conditionally water-resistant, but covered with a foil the ink won’t bleed. We recommend „Rotring Rapidograph“.
Without using a foil, we suggest waterproofed, lightfast pens. These pens bleed, when covered with a foil. We recommend “Staedler permanent Lumocolor” (Art.-No. 318-9) and “Staedler Triplus Ball M”.
Laser Printer:
Please test different types of laser printers at first. Sometimes there are considerable tolerance differences (temperature), even among printers of the same company. Not every laser printer can put in 180g paper;
besides the temperature of the fixation station can be insufficient, so that the print can be scratched off.
Suitable laser printers offer a selection of different papers (i.e. label, carton). It is important to choose the option Label or Carton, so the temperature of the laser will increase automatically and the
print on the labels will be more resistant to scratches and abrasion.
Another criterion: The label sheet should keep upright in the laser printer; which means a separate putting in of single sheets (mostly up to 30 sheets) with the throwing out of the label sheets
at the back (=straight running through).
Very good: Kyocera Ecosys P3045dn and Brother HL-L2375DW. The print is scratch-proof and abrasion resistant.
Thermal Transfer Printer:
In libraries thermal transfer printers are becoming more important. Besides the large-scale production of prefabricated labels, individual labels of very good quality can be printed by using the thermal-transfer technology.
Good results are achieved by using the thermal transfer printers from the company Carl Valentin; the speed of printing and the temperature can be adjusted in accordance with the requirements of the print medium, so that very
good prints are possible. Nevertheless our labels can also be printed by any other thermal transfer printer of miscellaneous producers.
Thermal Transfer Foil
Good printing results can only be achieved by using the correct foil.
We made very good experiences in using the thermal transfer foil Ricoh B110A-X2 (artificial resin/wax mixture).