I can recommend a very inexpensive laser printer that I use at home for all my printing, including label-printing, the Brother HL-L2340DW.  

I bought it on a review from Wirecutter:  http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-laser-printer and it really does a fine job.   We have in our library office a higher-capacity Brother printer that is also a real workhorse, but probably overkill for a single-user desktop.  

The HL-L2340DW is $80 today at Amazon and it comes with a starter toner cartridge.  Standard toner cartridges are $30 and high-yield cartridges are $45, pretty good as toner costs go.  

When I print labels with it, I manually feed the sheets.  I'm not sure you have to do that, but I don't print a lot of labels at home.  

Anyway, my experience with the Brother brand has been entirely positive and I can recommend the HL-L2340DW for your situation, particularly if you are looking for something economical and sturdy. 

Margaret Sylvia
Professor and Assistant Director
St. Mary’s University Blume Library
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210-431-2299 ext. 1320


-----Original Message-----
From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Julie Swierczek
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2017 9:35 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] desktop printer for label sheets

Oh Collective Wisdom!

We use sheets of archival labels to label our document boxes in the archives.  I think we buy them from one of the major library suppliers (Gaylord, etc.)  although I can't say which for certain.

The person who prints the most labels uses a desktop printer for this purpose.  After three years of printing mostly labels, the printer will not feed the sheets into the printer any longer.  I believe they tried replacing a roller or some such part - I know, I'm being real sketchy on details here, sorry - and it did not improve.  You can't even get it to work if you manually feed the label sheet into the printer to help it get started.

So, if you were going to buy a relatively-inexpensive - say under $300 - printer for this purpose, knowing you were going to be feeding labels into it all the time, what would you recommend?

And, if you think it is ridiculous to expect a desktop printer to handle labels for years at that price, go ahead and say so and recommend whatever more expensive product you think is a good idea. We might just have unrealistic expectations for a desktop printer in that price range.

Thanks much.

Julie

Julie C. Swierczek
Librarian for Primary Resources and Metadata Services Swarthmore College Peace Collection and Friends Historical Library [log in to unmask] http://www.swarthmore.edu/Library/peace
http://www.swarthmore.edu/friends-historical-library
she/her/hers