At the beginning of label history, most businesses used pin feed labels printed on computer dot matrix, impact printers or typewriters. Mailing addresses, sales reports and all kinds of reports were commonly printed on pin feed labels.
Medical labels are not leaflets that come with medications and that tell us how to use them. They DO NOT convey information about chemical composition of drugs and about side-effects of taking them. Medical labels are little stickers that are used to inform the medical staff about something related to the patient, and they can be in form of a communication label, alert label, blood label, etc. They can be stuck to the doctors’ gloves, blood bags, patient’s chart, file folder, or any other paperwork. They are usually brightly colored and written in large-enough letters, so that anyone can quickly spot and read them. Sometimes a patient’s life depends on whether his or her doctor is notified via medical label of the patient’s asthma, high pressure or allergy to penicillin.
Then came laser and inkjet printers, thermal transfer printers, direct thermal printers, and some other formats as well. Regardless of the competition, many people continued to use pin feed labels for many reasons. One of the most important is their cost. Paper they are supplied on and dot matrix printers that print them are very inexpensive compared to most other types of labels and printing techniques. These printers use cloth ink ribbons to imprint text and graphics on the label, which are cheaper than toners, cartridges and thermal transfer ribbons. Also, pin feed label printing is relatively easy, because the continuous paper which contains labels can be easily changed and has pin holes on both sides that fit into the printer, on a platen that has pins on each side to keep the paper in place, perfectly aligning it.
The image quality of pin-feed printed labels is not as good as that of laser printed labels, but for applications where image quality is not as important as the efficiency and cost of label printing, this is a perfect choice.
Let’s see what else we can learn about pin-feed labels from the Pin-Feed Printer Label Pros.
