Pledge Drive: QR Code Label Printer

#1

@mbg and I went on an adventure to Freeside, a massive makerspace in Atlanta. They had many cool things, but one we really thought we could bring back was their QR Sticker Station!

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So this is a Brother QL-800 sticker printer. It’s hooked up to a computer running some software it looked like they made, where they could just enter a link and immediately print a QR code sticker (or some sort of other sticker). This is useful for us, because we can easily make QR codes to stick on tools and point to their documentation.

We’ve looked through the options for cheap sticker printers, but this one actually looks like the best for us. It’s a fairly cheap option so it’s not full colour, printing in black and RED, but that’s obviously more than we need.

Costs

There may be slightly cheaper sources.

A roll is 62 mm x 30 m. A QR code will probably be 90 mm, assuming a 62x62 square for the
code and 25 mm for some header text. This means we should get about 330 QR codes out of each roll, which is more than we need, so ongoing consumable cost should be very low. The printer comes with a small 5m roll, but I envisage ‘shiny thing must press button’ so we’ll probably burn through it fairly fast. Therefore, we should order 2 rolls up front.

So the target number is £110.

Pledges

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#2

We have one at Fixing Factory!

#3

Also - make this a wiki.

#4

done!

1 Like
#5

it print black and red, yes buy

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#6

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55521301/printing-label-from-brother-ql-800-label-printer might be of interest

#7

The benefit of this specialised setup is the speed / ease of it right? Like a Dyson battery powered vacuum. Always ready to go.

I really like the idea of qr codes on tools linking to their wiki.

Maybe this is a stupid question but how durable are the stickers?
If we want permanent QR codes next to tools we could achieve that with a standard printer and use the laminator we already have

#8

If we can formalize which tools are lone working, I wrote some bash to generate images for each tool with the qrcode, induction required, and lone working rule here:


The idea was to panel them at a standard size and print/reprint them as needed.

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#9

Yeah, the point is to make it convenient, quick, consistent, and extremely obvious. If we can make it a 2-minute task using some sorta standard workflow, that chucks out a consistent QR code (that hasn’t been monetised), then it’s actually something people will do.

#10

the ease of setup and open access is pretty much it. Kyle wrote well working code that can actually generate the tags, but frankly it’s been about a year and they haven’t been made. I’ve meant to do it but have been putting it off; others have made ad-how tags around the space.

I’ve used the handheld label maker to put short notices on tools, but it’s pretty slow to use.

Something in general I think that SLMS can improve on is communication, and the ability to quickly crank out notices, instructions, and links to discourse and stick them on things is something that can help that.

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#11

My suggestion, if you haven’t bought the Brother yet, buy a 2nd hand Zebra printer with USB or Ethernet.

Zebra printers can take any label type up to 4" wide without needing to use a specific labels, they are also more sustainable as they have a recyclable cardboard core usually, rather than the ABS plastic holder that the Brother QL series use.

Hers an example:

3 Likes
#12

one up for Zebra