10 Rules for Proper Price Gun Maintenance, Use, and Service

Many business owners and managers have requested a worksheet with best practices for servicing, using and maintaining a price marking gun.  Here are the 10 steps or rules to remember.  I have set them to the acronym "MY PRICE GUN"

1. MARK ON A CLEAN/DRY SURFACE - Labels generally will not stick to surfaces that are dusty, wet, or frozen (covered in frost)  Some adhesives are made for complex surfaces (example: our tire adhesive) such as rubber to which many adhesives will not cling.
2. YIELD TO A JAM - If while using, the trigger locks or jams, DO NOT FORCE IT! there's a reason for the hangup.  If you are not familiar with the problem, call for help.  Many jams can be dealt with very easily.
3. PLACE IT DON'T TOSS IT - Tossing the gun when finished can break the dial shaft, knob, or any other extended part.
4. REPLACE INK ROLLERS - Ink rollers dry out and become flaky this causes the print band pads to become bloated from the fibers of the ink roller. Using dry ink rollers, even for a short period of time, can lead to scrapping the gun, because print head replacement is too expensive.  The ink roller should be replaced every 15000-20000 impressions or every 3 months.  In dry climates (arrid or desert), you may need to replace ink rollers more frequently, depending on your storage method.
5. INSPECT YOUR CONSUMABLES - Many problems are not related to the pricing gun, but to the labels that are in it.  Problems can include:

• Incompatible Labels
• Defective Labels
• End of a Roll of Labels
• Old Labels (The average shelf life of labels is 2-3 years)  Some companies distribute labels made overseas and purchased in bulk the labels sit in a warehouse for several years before they are sold.

6. CLEAN YOUR GUN - Labels stuck inside or outside the gun should be removed at the earliest opportunity.  The longer a jammed or stuck label (even if it doesn't seem to effect use) stays on your gun or gun part, the harder it will be to remove in the future.
7. ENGAGE THE DIAL SHAFT - The price gun is meant to be operated with the dial shaft pushed all the way back in.  Some price guns will actually not apply a price or advance a label if the dial shaft is out even a little bit.  Putting the dial shaft in the proper position will prevent the dial shaft from breaking when it strikes a surface as you're applying the label, or if the gun is accidentally dropped.
8. GRIP FIRMLY NOT HARD - Moving parts can break if you squeeze the trigger too hard. Most price guns are made for a firm grip, but gentle squeeze, this prevents fatigue to the user from using the pricing gun, and protects the moving parts from abrasion.
9. USE THE LANYARD - A very large percent of all pricing guns that come in for repairs have been dropped (sometimes multiple times).  Wrap the lanyard around your wrist before using it, and you will prevent the headache of finding out that your dropped price gun is not covered by warranty.
10. NEVER RE-INK - Most ink rollers are intended for single use. When reused they become grooved, wear out, or dry up and cause all kinds of problems.  Spend the few dollars on ink rollers, it will increase the life span of your print head.

For More Information Visit:

Care Instruction for Price Guns
Loading and Use Instructions

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My Heart Bleeds: Using a Primera Label Printer and Printing a Bleed in Illustrator, Photoshop or NiceLabel

Many customers have asked us how to print a bleed on a label using their Primera Printer. A bleed occurs when the ink touches the very end of the label on all sides. For our tutorial, we recommend you print out our guide and follow these steps. This tutorial is intended for advanced users who are printing from a program like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, or like programs.

What you need:

• Properly Installed and configured LX Series Printer with Operating System appropriate drivers


• Ink Cartridges


• Labels

Step 1 : Loading your Labels
Load your roll of labels properly into your Primera printer. For more instructions on how to load your Primera printer, please visit our youtube channel at www.youtube.com/kencostore.

Step 2: Get to know your size
Jot down the width and height of your label for future reference. (Width is measured from left to right, height is measured front to back, coming off the label roll

Step 3: Create your label in the Printer Driver

This is the complicated trick that will tell your printer that the labels loaded in the printer are larger than the true size of your label.

Here's how it works:
The driver is configurable to 100's of an inch. which means that 1inch=100 units.  If your label is say 3" X 3" then the true size would be 300 units by 300 units.

In order to print a bleed, both the artwork and the printer driver must think that the label is LARGER than the true size of that label.

Typically that size difference is small so we recommend making a small tweak of 3/100 of an inch larger on each side, that would make it 6 units total for width and 6 units total for height.

Make sure to apply this new size setting.

Step 4: Tweak your artwork.

If you designed your artwork to the exact size of your label, we need to make an adjustment.  In our example above (step 3) we used 3" X 3" with a bleed of 6/100's of an inch.  We have to do that now in our software as well.

In Illustrator or Photoshop, this step is fairly easy, by going to either the document size (Illustrator) or image size (photoshop) we can add the 6/100" easily to each of the width and height.

In NiceLabel this can be a little more tricky, because the elements are drag and drop and not necessarily in layers.  You should go to File > Label Setup > Dimensions and modify the size by adding 6/100" to the width and 6/100" to the height.

Step 5: Printing your first labels

At this point, you should have a label design that meets the new size requirements mentioned in steps 3 and 4, it is now time to print 2 labels and see where the printhead alignment is zeroed in.

If the bleed misses the top, bottom, left or right of the label, that means that we need to tweak the Top of Form and Left Margin Offset settings to account for the position of the label.

Note: These values can differ from roll to roll of material due to slight variation in the manufacture process, specifically the Left Margin Offset.

Conclusion: After a few tweaks of the Top of Form and Left Margin Offset settings followed by printing 2 labels, you should have a label with a bleed all around.

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Price Gun Care and Maintenance - Best Practices

In today's workplace, everyone is trying to save a few dollars and lower overhead costs. Sometimes this involves getting a longer life span from your business assets. To this end, we've come up with a few tips and practices to make that price gun last a little longer. Certainly, not every idea here works for every type of price gun, but as a whole, you may find that by following this simple guide, you can add 20-50% to the life span of your pricing gun.

General Use Practices

Use the lanyard wrist strap

Most price guns come with one. Dropping a pricing gun is never a good thing, if it is a metal framed gun, like the TOWA brand guns, it will cause the frame to bend out of shape. Other models, can crack or lose an important part (like a spring). And in some models, the ink roller would come loose inside and get jammed inside the mechanisms.

Store in a cool relatively humid location

Some environments cause the ink rollers and pricing bands to dry out, some symptoms include flaky material on the label after application, or yellowed or grayed bands in the price dial window. For optimal life span of both the ink roller and the pricing bands, keep your pricing gun in a controlled environment. Some locations to avoid: Direct Sunlight, Heated (Over 90F) or Cooled (Below 46F) Locations. De-Humidified Locations. Areas with high Sea Salt like beachfront shops etc., should keep the guns after use stored in a ziploc bag or equivalent container to prevent corrosion of metal parts.

Replace the Ink Roller (Early and Often)

An ink roller will have a lifespan of about 3 months or 10,000 impressions (whichever comes first). Make sure you replace your ink roller to prevent the microscopic dry fibers in the ink roller from getting into the microscopic holes in the print head bands.  If the print head bands get filled with fibers from the ink roller and not ink, it will cause a bloating effect.[1]

Loading

Instructions and Tutorials

There are some great resources including printed instructions and video tutorials available at www.kencostore.com or www.kenco.tv for helping you load and use your gun.

Don't Force it.

If it seems that there's extra force required, generally it means that a step was missed in loading or maintaining.  Stop immediately and try something else.

Cleaning

The Print Head

Once in a while, you may need to remove extra fibers or dry ink blotches from some of the numbers on the application side of the print head bands.  To do this, we recommend a solution of 1/10 dish soap and 9/10 water, and a soft bristled toothbrush.  Dip the brush in your soapwater solution, and brush gently in a circular motion the numbers like 4, 6, 9, and 0.  other numbers generally won't need this treatment, but on some models you can brush in a vertical direction.

Interior Mechanisms

Pricing labels will cause build up of adhesive on various moving and stationary parts of the interior and exterior of the pricing gun.  Not all adhesive removers are the same.  Avoid using corrosive products like goo-gone because it will wear away the plastic and rubber parts of your price gun.  Instead go with gentler products like rubbing alcohol or dish soap.  For picking at hard to reach locations, try to use wood or plastic toothpicks.

Footnotes
[1]Bloating Effect - This is a common problem for print head bands, caused by 2 major factors: 1. Microscopic Paper and Ink Roller Fibers getting trapped in the porous rubber printhead bands. 2. Repeated use of specific price points. (example  $X.99  where X changes but the other characters don't.  This causes the most used bands to exhibit the natural bloating that occurs over time to happen only to some and not all characters equally.

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