Written by Andy Neat, Product Manager- Marking & Installation
Happy New Year to you. I trust you all had a lovely mince pie, mulled wine, pigs-in-blanket and chocolate laden Christmas… I know I certainly did, well that’s what my bathroom scales tell me anyway.
So I find myself sitting here again with the task of keeping you enthralled with a blog about marking. The bad news for you is I have a habit of being quite boring, the good news is that these blogs are edited. With that said though I have a cracking bit of kit to tell you about.
For 4 years I’ve been Product Manager for marking systems and tools. Most of the time when requested to visit a customer who wants to look at a new marking system it’s because they either:
- need to upgrade from the competitor printer they have been using.
- they want a more cost effective package.
- they’ve seen a working partner using one of our systems and liked it.
Or, believe it or not, it’s because they’re handwriting their markers and want to look at printed options. I’m not knocking this way of marking because, at the end of the day, there’s more than one way to skin a cat and if the terminals and wires etc are identified then who cares, right?
Let’s say you’re a dab-hand with a Sharpie and you can write one label in 2-3 seconds, that’s not bad- but a marking system can print up to over 70 labels in less then 8 seconds! Or more specifically our new Thermomark Prime can mark labels that quick!
But, in my opinion, it’s not only about the time saved that’s important with marking, it’s a professional look too. A cabinet looks a lot more professional if the markers are printed nice and neatly (but I would say that with surname like ‘Neat’) Again, I’m not knocking hand written marking but, in the eyes of a customer, if you were to buy a Apple MacBook you wouldn’t expect the letters on the keyboard to be written in felt-tip when you’ve spent £900 for it.
With the new Thermomark Prime, I can comfortably say ‘there is no marker in a machine or cabinet that this printer can’t print.’ OK, it can’t engrave, but in the very rare cases that something can’t be printed on the Thermomark Prime, then it probably can be done on one of our other devices -like shrink sleeve markers for example.
One the beauties of the Thermomark Prime is its mobile abilities. Not only can it be installed on a PC and be used as a regular printer, but it can hold an 8 hour charge and be used independently on site or at the application with the touchscreen powered by Android. (Apple and Android quoted together in the same blog? I must be crazy!)
This is marketed as a mobile printer but I think it’s more of a hybrid by the fact it can be used either stationary or on the go, which puts more control in your hands. One of the best features of its mobile properties is that you can create a project of labels on your PC using our software (Clip Project) and use a USB stick to save them on the printer’s hard drive to print where ever you want.
Gone are the days when you are on site installing a machine or cabinet and you need to call the office to send you some more markers that you’ve just dropped into your pot of mechanical grease! You can just pop out to the van and print some more off if you need to, which brings me on nicely to the fact we have a car charger available for the printer’s battery pack….not to mention a back pack to carry it all in.
It’s hard to be unbiased when Phoenix Contact are paying my wages, but in my honest opinion this is one of the best marking systems in the world right now! With its integration properties with the Clip Project software (and did I mention EPLAN?) and flexible printing needs.
It’s fast become our best selling printer, it truly is awesome! Give me a call to see it for yourself- I take coffee, white 😉
I think that will do for today, I hope you’ve enjoyed my first instalment of 2017 and I look forward to next time. Until then I’m off to collect my royalties from Apple and Android.
For more information, contact Andy on 07786 252414 or email aneat@phoenixcontact.com
