If you are involved with a business that sends out its products by mail or parcel post, you may have heard of an interesting and useful new technology perfect for labeling items that don’t need to last a long time, like those destined for shipping. The process of direct thermal printing provides cost-effective, high-quality labels that are easy to scan, but have a relatively short shelf life.
The technology behind desktop direct thermal labels gives you the ability to use heat-sensitive materials to produce your desired images quickly and effectively. The direct thermal printing process applies a thermal print head to heat areas of thermo-chromatic paper material selectively. This specialized paper has been treated chemically to change color when it is exposed to a heat source, so when the paper is run over by the thermal print head, the heated areas react to form whatever image you have programmed it to create. You can even make two-color images by exposing the thermal paper to two different levels of heat!
So, what exactly are the advantages of this process? These direct thermal printers are very easy to operate when compared to common print technologies because there is no ink, toner, or ribbon required! With no expensive printing supplies that need to be regularly replaced beyond the paper that will be printed on, your long-term costs are greatly reduced. Using direct thermal technology also helps your organization to better follow ‘green’ sustainability policies because printing up a batch of labels produces virtually no waste! The recyclable materials used by direct thermal printers help keep our environment clean.
Another important benefit that direct thermal printers provide is that they are built to be more durable than old-fashioned laser or dot matrix printers, which can allow their continuous and reliable operation. Direct thermal technology is much more cost-effective for the production of short-time use labels for shipping and other applications because they are printed on continuous reels or sheets, and the process can be performed using industrial, desktop, and mobile printers.
We have so far only talked about how the technology is ideal for the production of shipping labels. Still, there is a wide range of other applications that can take advantage of thermal printing such as customer receipts, product barcodes, shopping coupons, event tickets, temporary name tags and visitor passes, food labels, and more! If these are things that your business uses regularly, consider switching to thermal printing so you can do something positive for the environment and save money, too!