Good morning, all from aldi this dimo electra tag 100h, which was 14 pounds 99. I think, and you get a free reel of mmm white paper labels and because these labels are so cheap, i decided to get uh white plastic labels and also white iron-on labels. Now, of course, i'm being sarcastic, these are not cheap 399 for a piece of plastic and a strip of label. That's outrageous! But then this is the sort of loss leader machine idea, ideas a bit like inkjet printers, the printer's cheap, very little markup on that um.

But the consumables are fabulastically expensive, so what'd you get in this machine for 14.99, let's find out by cutting it open with a pair of scissors right. What we got then printer and it has a massive lever on the side and you can just see up in that gap. Oh perhaps you can't see a blade appears when you press it, that's a bit manual. Isn't it i mean i'm assuming there's a motor in here to advance the printer labeled tape, there's a little switch there and on the underside of this there's a little uh chamfer or a sort of sloping thing.

So when you force this in, it changes the position of the switch look, that's up, let's put it in press it in take it back out and now the switch is down so that switch must change. The energy, i suppose to the print head, looks like it's. A thermal print head depending on whether you're using paper or perhaps plastic, or perhaps that iron on thing now this doesn't come with batteries uh. It's not surprising, i suppose, because the margin on this must be absolutely tiny.

Uh almost a lost leader, four double a's: let's get some four ikea alcoholists shut that up. Let's uh switch it on and see what it does. Oh precisely, nothing there's the display. Monochrome lcd looks like a dot matrix, or at least the bottom half looks like a dot matrix.

Well, let's try something really simple: h: oh where's e, oh, the keys are all in strange places: l l, o um. No, i haven't put the tape in so i better put the tape in so, let's shove that in like so and print, what's it gon na, do oh exciting press cut that cuts out. Oh look at that now. How do you make the size bigger? There's a format button: let's press that oh size there.

We are up. Oh no, that's borders down style size. I want perhaps have to press okay. Large, oh going up actually gets smaller, medium, small, large extra, large, okay print now it'll say hello in extra large.

It's a shame actually that it points away from you so that you can't actually see it. Is that an extra large? Oh, oh um! Well, it's certainly longer. I don't think it's any taller, and so, while i'm mucking about with it, let's try borders was it there? Yeah borders - oh abc123, oh bottom, all around all around with curvy. Oh look at all those different.

What is that a crocodile and some trees? That's very peculiar, but yeah borders. Let's try that one! Okay, oh! Oh actually shows it on the display, let's print that also in big i'm going to use this rear tape up quite quickly. Aren't i i don't want to do that really. Do i otherwise i'll be spending 3.99 buying another one? The cut actually works quite well.

Oh that borders rubbish because it touches the the font characters. Um just thought: i'd try one with the font in extra small and that border to see whether it's better than that. You really want a gap between the border and the characters. Oh, there is a gap there, but that really is extra small yeah, that's a bit weird! Isn't it it's a bit inconsistent? If you have the very large characters, you don't get a gap in the board and also the border looks very thin there and then in extra small.

It actually looks quite good, but it's extra small right. Let's try on white plastic and see what that's like um. I'm just thinking that, because the plastic is a thicker substrate, that's probably going to push the switch the other way uh. Does it uh? No, that seems to push the switch in the same direction right we'll have to open the uh iron on then, but no these all seem to push that slide.

Switch in the same direction. They've all got the same angled slope on all three of these, so maybe there's another type of cartridge that would push that switch in the other direction. I don't know well, i suppose i should produce a useful label. So here i've got a box of bits and pieces, so, let's just say bits and pieces.

Uh b i uh or where's t yeah, the alphabet's. Just in linear format, which is quite annoying bits space. I need an ampersand. There was a symbol, insert symbols.

Oh, that's a bit of a fact: isn't it um? Oh those are monetary symbols, cats and dogs. There's ampersand, okay, oh that's a faff! Isn't it getting to that? I don't think you saw any of that. Did you never mind uh p, i e c o e s. You learn this and you're gon na forget how a qwerty keyboard works.

Um that looks okay, i'm just gon na print it i'm not gon na bother with the border print. I wan na keep it as simple as possible. Now these um wide margins, this shouldn't be massively larger than these, because of course, it's all going to be in the middle there, but yeah that looks pretty good. Oh now, that's on that's not on the iron on.

It's not on the white paper, that's on the white plastic, but actually it feels the same as the paper. So it must be a very thin plastic and actually that looks really nice, because it's kind of glossy, whereas the white paper is matte, i mean different substrates. Would work in different situations? I suppose, but let's stick this white plastic onto my box, see what it looks like that's just occurred to me. I wonder if you can get dymo compatible labels which are cheaper than the official dymo labels which would make? Oh, that's annoying.

Isn't it which would make the system a bit easier or a bit less expensive to use? Let's stick that on my box: oh yeah, pretty good bits and pieces. Look at that! So that's pretty good! It's pretty easy to use you don't i mean i'm sure there are lots and lots of features on this if you really want to delve into it, but uh it's pretty much ready to go, as is if you're not bothered with fancy borders and stupid crocodiles, but We really want to see how this works. Don't we so i think i'm going to take that reel of label out and start to unscrew this. It does have some visible screws on the bottom.

Well, goodness me, there are a lot of screws in here. I was just wondering if that label might have been printed on on a dymo label printer, but i don't think so because it's got rounded corners, so no, i think they probably printed that some other way right there. It is um that board looks like it slides out that battery connector board. I hope it does.

Let's get that out, because otherwise the two halves are connected together with a wire now there's a big sort of springy linkage mechanism, thing, which i think, when you close the lid, it pulls the print head, um up against the tape and it's all a bit dodgy. So i've got to try and get that spring off there to get the lid piece off now. What else have we got? Um, there's a massive blob chip there. Unusually, it's rectangular there's a chip here which is eight pin and i'm just wondering whether that's an e squared prom or some sort of serial memory um, it's a blo51g.

I think i'll just check that yeah. I can't really get any results for that chip, but it just makes me feel that that's a memory, because i think this has the ability to save label designs and that sort of thing there's a little 3.3 volt regulator there and a few transistors and that's pretty Much it ribbon cable down to the uh switch pcb and another cable there. You can see sort of folded up which goes down to the display i'll see if i can lift that a little bit yeah. This is your usual.

Probably gold plated zigzag patterns on a pcb here and here you've got little carbonized rubber buttons, which all on one single piece which just pop forwards and touch these pads, so a fairly standard, relatively cheap keyboard arrangement. There. I love the way they've molded this with sort of different colors injected. Shouldn't really touch that, should i uh different colors injected in different positions to get the colored buttons.

That's really quite neat. I uh i like that. Uh, it's hard to see the lcd, because it's sort of up on this slightly raised section here, so that's tucked under there i mean you can very clearly see a quite high density. Uh ribbon, cable there far more high density than this.

Oh that's probably! Oh. It looks like two millimeter pitch, but that is quite a fine pitch going down to the lcd. So that's fine and i can just see in there a motor but i'll put the keyboard back together again just before we go and look at that. Yes, just down in there, you can see the shaft and back plastic molding of a fairly cheap, looking dc motor in there, and if we come around to here uh, where did i see it down in there? Oh yes, down in there, you can see a little gear driving that rubber wheel, i'll just try and point that out that rubber wheel there, which is to advance the tape - and you can just see the end of a worm - drive driving that gear.

But that doesn't seem to be on axis with that motor, so there must be another gear in there somewhere and it's quite possible that there's another blob chip under there. I can see a slightly raised surface in there, which is almost certainly the lcd driver driving the lcd on this massive uh connector there. So there it is 14.99. I mean i wouldn't want to make this for 14.99.

Maybe there is a small profit to be made on this, but i think the major profit area is these things which i value at about 20p, and now i've got to get this back on, which means getting that springy hook around there, which is going to be Tricky uh, i think i need seven hands for this. Okay, i think that's got it right. Let's get this back back on, but first i'm gon na have to put this battery connector thing back in here. How did it go? Did it go in like that? Yes, i think it did and then those wires trap in there.

So let's trap them in there like so and now i can put the two halves of the case back together and hopefully it'll all go back together and work. Well there. It is it's back together. So it works.

Oh okay, s, oh, is that exclamation mark gon na be a pain in the neck. There must be a quick way of getting these symbols. Oh, let's just print that it works. I've got no um tape in there.

Have i so, let's put white plastic in there print out it comes it works, and did you know that a label maker in french is an etiquette? I mean what etiquette got to do with making labels, probably something in french or there's some stuff on the back? Uh, well, it seems that paper and iron on are only available in white, but the plastic labels. You can get in all these different colors. Although aldi didn't have those uh. Here's some interesting stuff look: um copyright, 2020 newell office brands, dymo.com, so newell, obviously own the dymo name.

Now we've got newell in switzerland, newell poland services in poland. But look at this in the uk. It's newell rubbermaid, uk services, so is rubbermaid one of their other brands, i'm pretty sure i've got something with rubber made on it. Let's have a look in this office.

Yes, look at this. The stool in my office is rubber, rubbermaid brand. So it looks like that's one of their other brands and yes, look you can see when i close the lid how that mechanism there brings the thermal printer head into contact with the label material and the pinch roller so that it can print and move at the Same time, interesting - and i can also see looking at my computer on amazon and ebay - you can get these letter tag compatible, uh printer cassettes, there's someone selling here five cassettes for nine pound. Ninety that makes them about two pounds each rather than four pounds each.

So there we are, there's the dymo lectra tag: 100 h label printer, which you can get from aldi for 14.99. I think it was, and you can also get the paper iron on and plastic label cassettes for 3.99, but it seems you can also get them for around two pounds: each. If you get compatible versions, um well, it works. The contrast is superb, actually very dark black.

On very clear white um, so yeah they're, actually quite good labels, cheerio.