Anyone born before 1995 will know the valued relationship of a pencil or biro pen and an audio cassette. You'd grab your favourite mixtape of songs recorded off the radio and just before you put it into play you notice the tape is slipping out over your fingers and thumb. You grab a pencil, put it in one of the spools and spin to get it back to normal. Times have moved on and the world of iPods and Spotify has taken over. The pencil is now back to nothing more than a writing implement, or is it?
Labelling of today
You've got your P-Touch printer and a selection of your favourite tapes. But switching between all these cassettes is taking its toll and the ribbons are starting to slip out the side. You need to get that ribbon back inside before it gets pulled through with the label tape and ruins the TZe cassette while making a mess. Save it from the bin! Grab your pencil or ballpoint (Bic or Staedtler; brands don't matter), put it in the little ribbon rewinder hole and looking down on the top, spin it anti-clockwise until the ribbon is back inside and crease-free. Watch the video below to see how it's done. Hopefully you'll never need to do this, but just in case you do, you'll know how!
Inside a TZe Tape
Ever wondered how the TZe tape works and what it looks like inside? It would be a shame to waste a TZe tape just to take it apart for one short moment. Don't worry, I'll do it so you don't have to. It was a little tricky to take apart carefully. There were quite a few little clips to undo and prise open. I showed this to the sales team here at Advanced Labelling and they all found it very interesting. Getting it to print while open was a little tricky. I had to cut a couple of parts of the top casing to act as supports for the overlaminate and a couple of rollers near where it's laminated. Doing this did result in a small injury* but I'm okay so all is good. After some playing and a few labels printed I managed to produce the below video. If you have any questions, comments or requests please feel free to contact us.
*No other members of staff were injured in the making of this video.