Jar Labelling Machine Guide – How To Label Honey Jars Manual

Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey, and today we're going to have a look at the Labelroo labelling machine. Now, I bought this labelling machine about 6 months ago because I was getting a bit fed up of labelling all my jars by hand. There's nothing wrong with labelling jars by hand, but when you've got long format labels such as this, they're 200ml by 50ml, it can be quite difficult to get the consistent look that you're looking for. You want to get the labels as straight as possible, and you want the edges around the back to line up. So I'm going to show you today how you put together the labeling machine, show you how you run the jars through it, and then just kind of tell you what I like about it. So what's great about this is that it's incredibly simple to use, and it's really simple the way it's been built as well. It's, it's made out of plastic and Perspex, and that's it. There's no electric parts, there's no power, there's nothing really that can go wrong. Um, and the guy that I bought it from is really good and really helpful as well, so if you've got any issues you can drop him an email. When you are ordering your labels, you need to make sure that they come on a 76mm core. Now that's really important because that's the size that this machine works with. If you get any other size than a 76mm, then it just won't work. But luckily that's pretty standard. So that's the core and that's how they come. Now another important thing to say is you need to make sure that your labels are fed in that orientation, i.e., that's the left and that's the right. Or it could be that that's the right and that's the left, that's fine. What you can't have is the top and the bottom feeding off the roll like that because it doesn't work that way around. So don't order your labels like that because it would be a very expensive mistake. So I'll show you how it goes together. So the first thing you need to do is you get these little plastic inserts here and you just pop them into the core. Um, they're a bit of a tight fit, but that's what you want. So I'll just pop this other one in and then I'll do a bit of a close-up. So that's the close-up there. As you can see, they just kind of fit either side. It doesn't matter if they're not completely straight, they seem to align themselves after a little while. And then what you do is you take this side here, um, you have 2 of these pieces and a bar, and you have 2 of these pieces. The way that they need to go is you have that piece on the outside You feed that piece through like that, then you put your labels through. And I have to make sure— turn this around to make sure I get it in the right way. You make sure that the feed is at the bottom, so coming through like that. So there's your feed, and that needs to be at the bottom of this setup here. And then you do the same on the other side, so you get this piece. Put that on, and then the final piece there, which is to kind of clamp it all together. So you end up with something like that. Now what you do is you drop that into the slot like that, um, and you feed that underneath. So I'm going to move the camera to get a bit of a better close-up on this because it's quite Quite fiddly. Okay, so what you're trying to do now is you need to take this loose piece and feed it through the gap there. I promise this is the, uh, the most fiddly bit of it. So you feed it through there and then you come back around. I always take a label off just to help me stick a bit, and you feed it back around there. And what you want to do is you want to stick it onto this bar. So I just use a bit of Cut off label to do that. It doesn't have to be perfect at all. It doesn't have to be neat. And then what you do is you attach the handle. So you put the handle on there, and that just spins on and get it on. And that really is the difficult part done. So all you do now. Is you just rotate this round, and then what that does is that it starts to feed the labels through. So I always end up sacrificing a couple of the first labels to come through, um, because I find that as you turn this round, it's actually aligning itself. So I'll just remove that first label off there like that. That's gone. And, and that, and that is it. The machine is now set up. So I'll just move this back up here so you can see it a bit better. And I will take a jar. Now these things here, you can set them up with your screwdriver, so you can go in here and move them, but I won't adjust them because these are pretty much perfect for what I— they're the jar size that I use. And then all you do is you put the jar in there, you make sure that it's touching this side because that's your kind of datum, and then all you do is you just roll and spin it around like that. And that's it. Now, as you can see, that one there, it's gone on perfectly straight. It's actually a little bit too high on the jar, if you can see that. So when you're setting up for the first time, kind of an evening, it might take a couple of goes to get it set up correctly. Um, I always have a couple of test jars that I can use, but once you've got it set up, that's it, it's right and it stays completely perfect. So You work out where you want to go. So I want to go a little bit towards the right. All I'll do is adjust that like that, move it slightly to the right, only a couple of millimeters. And then you take your next jar, you put that on. Um, at that point you realize that you've gone the wrong way, so you take it back. Like I say, it's just a little bit of trial and error at the beginning just to get it, just to get it set up. And then once you're happy with it, you've got— you could do literally hundreds of jars in a row without tinkering with it. So I just want a couple more millimeters this way, and I think that should be good to go. Right, we'll give that a go. So again, all you do is you just turn it around like that. And that is it. I'm very happy with that. And as you can see, the fact that it perfectly lines up here, that's what's really important. It's that consistency, being able to get the labels on the right way again and again and again. It's all right to do it once or twice, um, but it's, it's the 2 or 3 labels out of 100 that are the wrong way way or not perfectly aligned. That's what makes it look bad. And with this, you can really get the consistency. So I'll just show you one more label now, and this is how quick it is to do. Literally pop it on, spin it around. This is kind of the speed that I'd normally go at, and that's it, it's done. Again, perfect label, perfect alignment. And that's about it. So there we are. Um, it's as easy as that. Like, the labels that I use here You can actually get 400 labels on a single roll. So once you've done that setup there, it's literally 2 or 3 seconds per jar. I use one of these as well. These are really helpful. So instead of printing individual labels and putting my lot number on the label or my best before date on the label, on the label itself I have best before slash lot number, sorry, lot number, see base. And then I use one of these machines and all this does is literally print it like that. And then I get my best before number. So I don't know if you can see that. So I use best before 13th of December '22 with an M on it. And then because I'm using the 6-digit format for my dates, I can actually use that for my lot number as well. So that's very quick. And then I use these tamper labels as well. The tamper label goes over the top like that. I normally put the best before date on the bottom of the jar. I was just doing that to show you, and that's it. So that's my setup. Um, I get all of my labels from printedeasy.com. They're very competitive on the labels, um, and the prices really go down considerably when you start placing big orders with them. So I try and order 10,000 at a time, um, and it works out for a 200mm by 50mm label, which is perfect for 8 ounce and a little bit small for 12 ounce. But it'll work. Works out about 4.5-5p per label, which I think is very competitive. Um, so very, very happy with the Label Room machine overall. If you want to upgrade from the Label Room machine, there's a number of electronic versions on eBay for about £500 or £600, and the reviews, to be honest, aren't the best for them. And then the next step up from that, you're talking a kind of fully automatic setup, which can set you back about £7,000-8,000. So I think for £200, it's actually less than that, for about £190, for something that literally cannot go wrong, it's, it's a real bargain and it's really speeded up the whole jarring and labeling process for me. So give it a go. Okay, so thanks again for watching my video and I'll see you next time. Bye.