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Label printer

A facility prints tank labels through the browser, from whichever computer the printer is plugged into. The last thing to set up in a deployment, and the only part of one that depends on hardware somebody can see.

A new facility needs nothing done here to work: its label settings start at a 3.5 x 1.125 inch address label with a default layout, which is the common stock. Come here when a facility is actually going to print.

Install the printer driver on every machine that will print labels

Labels print through the browser, from the computer the printer is plugged into — so this is per machine, not per facility.

Use the manufacturer's driver, not whichever generic one the operating system offers. On Windows and macOS that is DYMO's own installer and is usually what happens anyway. On Linux it is not: a LabelWriter 450 added without printer-driver-dymo installed falls back to CUPS's built-in "DYMO Label Printer" PPD, which printed blank labels from Chrome while Firefox, lp and a LaserJet all printed the same document correctly (2026-10-06). Installing the package and pointing the queue at the real PPD fixed it:

sudo apt install printer-driver-dymo
lpinfo -m | grep -i dymo                       # find the model, e.g. lw450.ppd
sudo lpadmin -p <queue> -m dymo:0/cups/model/lw450.ppd
sudo lpadmin -p <queue> -o PageSize=<stock>    # e.g. w79h252 for a 30252 address label

A queue whose make-and-model reads just "DYMO Label Printer" is on the generic driver; a correct one names the model.

Then make the facility's Labels settings match the stock actually loaded — width, height, font and font size, in the settings editor. The sizes are in inches and take fractions (a 30252 address label is 3.5 x 1.125). Arial is the font to use: it is on every machine, or substituted by one with the same metrics, where Helvetica is a different face on each platform.

A label printer grips the stock and cannot print right to its ends, and where the printing lands differs by printer, operating system and browser: the same label on the same printer lost its first characters from one browser and its last from another. No setting is right everywhere, so each facility tunes two things once:

  • Left and right side adjustment, on the Labels settings card. Inches of blank at each end of every label. Raise the left one when the first characters are cut off, the right one when the last are. The defaults (0.2 left, 0.1 right) are what a Windows machine running Chrome wanted.
  • The browser's print dialog margins, for the top. The application states no margin of its own so that the dialog's setting is honoured; this is the only control over the top and bottom edges, and it is per machine. Start from "none" / 0 and add a top margin only if the top line is clipped.

Starting points, measured on a LabelWriter 450 with 30252 address labels and the side adjustments at 0. They are where to begin, not the answer: the direction swapped between browsers on the same machine.

OS Browser Dialog margins that printed whole Still wrong
Windows Chrome 0.2" left, 0.1" right —
Windows Firefox custom margins, 0.2" right default margins clip a full line at the top; the QR clips top and bottom
Linux Chrome 0 mm left, 4 mm right —
Linux Firefox 0.25" left, 0" right choosing any custom margin adds about 0.25" at the top, even at 0

With the side adjustments doing the left and right, the dialog's left and right margins stay at 0 and only the top is left to it. Do the tuning on the machine the printer is plugged into, with the browser the facility will actually use, and expect to repeat the dialog part on each printing machine.