Printers
Dymo LabelWriter for lab labels
A LabelWriter is the fastest way to get a label onto a bottle, and the wrong way to get one onto anything that will be frozen or wiped.
Direct thermal is the whole story
A LabelWriter has no ribbon. It creates the image by heating a coating on the label itself, which is why the printer is inexpensive and the consumable is a single item. It is also why the image is impermanent: anything that heats the label again, or dissolves the coating, degrades the print.
In a laboratory that means three specific failures. A label on a bottle that gets wiped with 70% ethanol loses its print. A label on a vial in a −80 °C freezer fades and abrades against the rack. A label on a tube that goes in a heat block turns uniformly dark. None of these are adhesive failures — the label is still there, unreadable.
Where a LabelWriter genuinely earns its place
- Room-temperature reagents with a short life
- A buffer that will be finished in a month does not need a five-year label.
- Shelf, drawer and box labelling
- Nothing is wiped, nothing is frozen, and re-printing is trivial.
- One-off labels, immediately
- No sheet to waste and no ribbon to change. For a single label it is unbeaten.
- High-volume sample labels that are read within days
- Where the label's job is finished before its durability limits arrive.
Getting true size out of a LabelWriter
The roll size selected in the driver must match the roll that is loaded. If it does not, the driver scales or crops to its own idea of the media and the result looks plausible while being wrong — the most dangerous kind of error in exact-size work.
Print scaling in the application matters too. Sending an exact-size PDF page and letting the reader fit it to the media will shrink it by whatever margin the driver reserves. Set 100% or Actual Size, print one, and measure it.
Common questions
- Do Dymo labels survive ethanol?
- Generally not. The direct thermal image sits on the surface of the label and a 70% ethanol wipe can remove it. The label stays on; the writing does not.
- Can I use a Dymo for freezer labels?
- For a −20 °C freezer with short-lived contents, sometimes. For −80 °C or liquid nitrogen, no: direct thermal fades and abrades, and standard adhesive is not specified for those temperatures.
- Why does my Dymo print the label slightly small?
- Either the driver's roll size does not match the loaded roll, or the application is fitting the page to the media. Both are silent, and both are fixed by setting the correct media and 100% scaling.
Last reviewed 2026-08-24.