Efficient research relies above all on one principle: make it as easy as possible for researchers to work with minimal intervention and maximum convenience. The 5S philosophy for productive work is that you should have “a place for everything and everything in its place”.
Enter portable label printers designed for the lab. Portable printing is essential for researchers because it allows them to print labels quickly and accurately, no matter where they are in (or out) the lab. With a small, handheld printer, they can print stock and equipment labels immediately.
It’s an asset when working with biological samples in a fume hood, managing plant specimens in agricultural research, or collecting data in the field. The ability to print exactly what you need when you need revolutionizes inventory management practices – streamlining workflows, reducing errors, and boosting overall lab productivity.
We’ll explore the research benefits of portable printing and discuss various contexts where it can transform your day-to-day operations.
Benefits of Portable, On-Demand Printing
Track With Greater Accuracy
Accurate sample and material tracking is a huge benefit of using portable printers. These handheld devices allow researchers to print labels on demand, ensuring precise and immediate identification of samples, equipment, and materials. This capability eliminates errors caused by manual labeling or outdated information, increasing trust and confidence in the accuracy of your inventory.
Rather than having to use a physical system, or note things down and ‘remember’ to add it later, portable printers enable the tracking and maintenance of an up-to-date inventory, even when working remotely or in the field. This ensures that all lab materials are accurately identified and tracked in real-time, improving the overall reliability of lab operations.
Streamlined Processes and Increased Efficiency
Every researcher knows what it’s like to be in a research flow, moving through an experiment with great momentum, efficiency and accuracy. Everything you need is at your fingertips – until it isn’t. You go to the printer to print a label, take a break for a glass of water, and get side-tracked doing something else. Once you break your stride, it can be hard to find it again. Portable printers boost research efficiency by allowing research to proceed with less pauses, less interruptions, and less “I’ll deal with it later” moments.
Additionally, they reduce time spent on manual labeling tasks and allow for faster turnaround times while minimizing errors and rework.
They also maintain up-to-date inventory tracking from anywhere, ensuring accurate stock levels which leads to less stock being lost or misplaced, and eventually wasted. And by facilitating a highly organized, structured inventory management system, operational efficiency is further enhanced by the ability to quickly locate storage locations for stocks and boxes.
Flexible and Mobile Labeling Solution
Portable printers provide a flexible solution by eliminating the need to return to a central workstation. This capability ensures accurate identification and tracking from anywhere, even in remote or hard-to-reach locations, enhancing productivity. Researchers can access labeling capabilities via mobile apps, enabling instant updates to box contents, stock movements, and privacy levels, thus keeping inventory records current and reliable.
Removing The Human Aspect
It’s no secret that printers can print faster than humans can write – but like passing a task down to an assistant, it frees up researchers' time to do more research. The other big advantage of removing humans from the process is it significantly reduces the number of mistakes involved in labeling. These mistakes are often high-consequence and significantly impact the research, so avoiding them is paramount.
Where Do You Need a Portable Printer?
While a portable printer is an asset in the vast majority of research contexts, there’s a few situations where portable printers are simple ‘must haves’. Let’s explore them.
Fume Hood
Using a portable label printer when working in a fume hood is crucial for maintaining safety without compromising efficiency. Wireless printing allows researchers to label samples and reagents on demand without removing them from the controlled environment. This reduces the risk of exposure to hazardous substances and contamination.
The convenience of printing labels directly in the fume hood also streamlines workflows, ensuring accurate and immediate identification of materials, which minimizes errors and enhances productivity. Without a portable printer, mistakes are too often made when researchers leave the hood to print and collect labels, only to confuse the stock tubes they are labeling.
Research In The Field
Plenty of research takes place outside of the lab, and outside of four walls completely. With no Wi-Fi or electricity, standard printers aren’t simply inconvenient but aren’t an option at all. In these field research scenarios, having a portable label printer is indispensable.
Researchers can carry portable printers in their pockets and print labels on-demand, ensuring accurate identification of samples collected on-site. This capability eliminates the need to transport samples back to the lab before labeling, reducing the risk of misidentification, contamination, and straightforward sample loss.
By facilitating accurate and immediate labeling, portable printers significantly improve the reliability and organization of field research operations.
At Your Lab Bench
While the other situations are location-specific examples, there is still a strong case for having a portable printer at your lab bench – many lab printers are still a short walk away, through a door, or in a neighboring lab. Based on the 5S philosophy we mentioned earlier, a portable printer allows you to have everything “in one place”, so that you can continue research smoothly and uninterrupted.
Every time you leave your lab bench, there is inefficiency, increased risk of error, and a drop in productivity – no matter how good of a reason you have for getting up. With a portable printer, researchers have one less thing to worry about.
Final Thoughts
Portable printing offers significant benefits for lab research by enabling on-demand labeling, which ensures accurate and immediate identification of samples, equipment, and materials. This technology streamlines processes, reduces errors, and boosts productivity, allowing you to continue your research – uninterrupted.
Whether working in a fume hood, out in the field, or simply at your lab bench, portable printers provide the flexibility and efficiency needed to maintain precise inventory tracking and enhance overall lab operations.
Embracing portable printing solutions can transform your day-to-day research activities, making them more efficient, reliable, and productive.
New Integration: Labhandy and Brady Printers
Labguru customers can do all this and more with Labhandy’s integration to Brady’s portable printers. Scientists can now access and print labels on-demand, straight from their mobile phones.
Get to know Labhandy and find out more about our integration with Brady Printers.
