@anymouse_404 @gsuberland @Lunaphied I have a wide variety of stock due to varying needs, but I don't print all *that* many labels so the cost of stock is a drop in the bucket in the overall lab OPEX budget. So it's not worth the effort to find and qualify a second source.

@MekahimeAkari @whitequark Suuure, that's what he tells you.

But do you know what sid and bookworm are up to when you're not home? A neighbor said he thought he saw some backports...

@anymouse_404 @gsuberland @Lunaphied Nope

@MekahimeAkari @whitequark But things really kicked up a notch when Sid showed up

@gsuberland @Lunaphied i will warn you it's a slippery slope.

Before long you'll want different colors for pipe labeling, different materials (e.g. the nylon cloth is easier to peel off intact than the vinyl), several sizes of heatshrink, cable labels...

And you'll end up like me.

@gsuberland @Lunaphied But for simple needs, it's definitely one of the most cost effective options, or at least it was when I got it circa 2017.

@gsuberland @Lunaphied One thing to be aware of is that the BMP-21+ specifically has very limited formatting options, e.g. only centering for multiline (no left/right justify option). No idea about the replacement's capabilities.

With the Bluetooth version you can do the page layout in a phone app and have much more freedom of layout but it can also be more complex to just print off something quick. I keep both around.

@decryption I only made vanilla pride and trans, but once you have the polygons changing colors to suit your needs should be easy.

I added the text in my label printer software so the SVG is only the logo, but you should have no problem adding the text yourself.

https://www.antikernel.net/temp/esd-safe-space.svg

https://www.antikernel.net/temp/esd-safe-trans.svg

@gsuberland @Lunaphied Being able to custom print professional looking heatshrink has been such an amazing thing to have in the lab when setting up complex setups. Absolutely worth the $2/foot or whatever the cartridges cost.

@gsuberland @Lunaphied example heat shrink

@gsuberland @Lunaphied example wraparound cable label

@gsuberland @Lunaphied cable labeling stock

@gsuberland @Lunaphied my printers

@gsuberland @Lunaphied The smaller printers use cartridge based stocks that have either a tiny IC or in some cases what appears to be just shorting a few pins together.

So maybe just an eeprom with process settings (temp, feed rate, etc)?

@gsuberland @Lunaphied actually i'm not 100% that's the purpose.

One or two of the stocks didn't have RFIDs iirc, and it still worked?

What it *does* do, which is super handy, is auto detect which stock you have loaded without any awkward spring contacts on the spinning hub.

@Lunaphied They put RFID tags on the hubs of the spools for anti-counterfeiting so you have to use their stock too

@gsuberland @Lunaphied The thermal transfer ones do nice deep blacks though, so between that and the heatshrink/cable labeling capability I keep them around.

It's a captive market and everyone charges you an arm and a leg and you have to either pay up or not make nice labels.

@gsuberland @Lunaphied My other Brady printers, the BMP-21+ (handheld/self contained) and M211 (bluetooth to phone/PC), will both do heatshrink and wraparound cable labels and are only a few hundred.

But they're single color thermal transfer. Even the $1K J2000 won't do full color heatshrink, I don't want to know what one that can do that costs.

@Lunaphied Continuous length cut-to-size for oddball things like shelf bins.

Also the ability to print onesie-twosies. With a full sheet of die-cut stock going into a regular printer, if you're only doing one or two labels then re-feeding it later on you're going to flex the media and after a few print cycles start getting labels peeling off causing paper jams which, thanks to the adhesive, are a nightmare to clear.

So you effectively have to print an entire sheet of labels at once and write off anything you don't need. It leads to a lot of waste.

@Lunaphied Well I've made 5 and 6 bar SVGs so if you want to lesbian-ify or anything else, it would be easy to change the colors.