Common Label Printing Issues and How To Fix Them

Label printing is not always striaght-forward. Printing your own high-quality labels can prove to be a huge benefit to many businesses and individuals. Not only does it allow you to create customisable, unique labels in a variety of designs and colours, it also cuts down on printing costs and increases efficiency in an organisation too.

As with most technology, however, you will occasionally find that there are technical difficulties when trying to print labels through a personal device. We’ve put together this blog to try and cover the most common issues people face, in the hope that we can help you to resolve them as simply and swiftly as possible.

1. Label Jams
This is an age old problem, both when printing labels and normal paper, which can be caused by a number of different factors. The first piece of advice we have is not to buy cheap labels. Although they may save you a small amount of money in the short term, you’ll soon regret it when you’re trying to peel them off the inside of your printer. We also suggest storing your labels somewhere flat so that the paper doesn’t get bent, thus beginning to peel the labels from the sheet before they’ve even entered the machine.

Another very common reason for label jams is that the printer used printers hasn’t been recently cleaned. As a printer gets older, dust and dirt will begin to build up inside it, along with residual ink and toner. All of this affects the printer’s ability to function. Clean your printer regularly to prevent this from happening. You could even schedule it into a cleaning regime or, every time you replace a cartridge, give it a clean then.

What some people don’t realise is that many printers have bypass trays built into them. These give a straighter path for labels through the printing mechanism. This means that the paper won’t be bent as much and the labels won’t be as easily peeled off. However, even some bypass trays will get jammed from time to time, so follow the instructions above to be on the safe side.

2. Print Coming Off Of Labels When Using a Laser Printer
Again, there is more than one reason for this happening. The most common is that the printer hasn’t been calibrated to use the correct amount of heat and pressure. To change this, go to your printer’s settings and check that either the media type or weight is set to ‘Labels’. Some printers won’t have this option, so instead choose the ‘Heavy Paper’ setting. This should slow your printer down when it’s printing, allowing it to apply more heat and pressure.

The other reason for this problem often lays with the material you are using. Again, this might be stopping enough heat being created. A lot of labels specifically created for laser printing have a moisture in them that helps the toner bond to the paper. If they haven’t been stored correctly, the paper can dry out.

3. Labels Printing Wonky
The rollers in a printer can skew the labels by rotating them very slowly. Using the media bypass tray will stop the labels being pulled about unnecessarily by the rollers.

To combat all of these issues, the use of a good quality label, such as Avery, will go a long way. Also making sure to set the machine to the correct settings and the template on the documents to the right sizes should help alleviate the most common risks. For everything else, there’s EBM. Simply call us on 01376 512575 with your problem and if we can solve it, we will.