How the Brother label printers laminate the label.

It was time to get a new label printer, so I decided to get the popular Brother PTE300VP unit.
This is often on offer from prominent suppliers like Screwfix and Toolstation in the UK.
The list price is usually over £100 but on offer it can be bought as a kit for around £50. Here's link to the toolstation (UK) page I bought mine on:-
https://www.toolstation.com/brother-pte300vp-handheld-label-printer/p77444

It comes in a huge plastic powertool style case that is almost twice the size it needs to be. When you have a van full of tools and materials, space matters. The case has the printer, one roll of black on yellow 18mm tape, the full instructions and the VERY good mini-instruction book, a lithium battery, wrist lanyard and a 12V 2A charger with a standard barrel connector with REVERSE POLARITY!!! So the first label you print should be a warning one to make sure the PSU doesn't get mixed up with others, as it could damage other equipment. A test with a current limited supply suggests that the printer does appear to have polarity protection on its own input.

The label cartridges generally contain about 8m of tape and the heatshrink sleeve cartridges contain just 1.5m of sleeve. (Ordinary heatshrink can also be used over a tape based label.)
The cartridge widths available are 6mm, 9mm, 12mm, 18mm, 24mm and 36mm, but not all tapes/sleeves are available in all sizes and this printer has a maximum tape size of 18mm.

The labels are automatically laminated so the text is underneath a clear front layer. The system for doing that is simple, clever and works very well.

The official cartridges tend to be quite expensive, but there is a huge market of 3rd party cartridges on eBay from £3.00 shipped versus £15 to £25 for an official cartridge of 12mm black on white tape. The advantage of using the official cartridges is getting a known quality of adhesive and print stability. The copy unit I took apart sounded a bit "tight" in the video because I had misaligned the tape when I disassembled it. (It was smooth again when I fixed it.)

You can get a wide range of tape colours and styles, both official and unofficial. That includes clear tapes, metallic tapes, security tapes that will leave a checkerboard pattern when removed and other novelty tapes with patterns and images on them.

It's a very good label printer. Loads of good features well suited to marking of electrical cables and equipment.

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