I have a Brother 1/2" label maker, and an Epson WL-400.
My first attempt at labeling involved the Ideal-brand cloth-like wire labels. They stick well, but offer no clues about route or purpose... at least, once you've lost the notebook that documented them.
Attempt 2: print 1/2" labels w/Brother, apply with short direction partly wrapped around cable. Complete disaster. They were falling off within hours.
Attempt 2a: same labels, applied in helix path around cable. Generally held up, but utterly impossible to read when you can only see 2-3 letters at a time... especially when you're trying to read "in-situ" without disconnecting or moving cables.
My third attempt used the Brother to make 'flag' type labels. ~70% of them survived less than a year. Most got torn off.
Attempt 4 came up with the idea of using 2-line mode to make labels wrapped around the "long way". Practical limit of 4 characters per line... an arrow (up or down) and a 3-digit number representing the original number printed on the far end of the cable (remaining the same, even if the cable were later shortened). Hard to read due to orientation, but fairly durable. Time-consuming to make and apply, because I had to trim one end so it wouldn't cover up the writing.
Later, my cartridge ran out, so I bought an Epson WL-400 for $24.95 on sale at CompUSA... mainly, because it can print rotated text on wrap-around labels. The labels from Round 4 were durable, but occasionally hard to read since the text wrapped around horizontally. Which brings us to Round 5.
The Epson labels are easier to read because the text is now left-right when the cable is horizontal, and I can print 4 lines of text (repeating the number pair twice, so I can see it without having to rotate and twist the cables), but there's a new problem -- the Epson labels don't stick worth a damn -- not even the ones alleged to be "super stick". The slightest *hint* of contact with skin destroys their adhesion. I'm also disappointed by the fact that using 3/4" labels doesn't seem to give you any more printable width (when rotated) than 1/2" does. You just get wider margins. Grrrr.
While I'm busy griping about the Epson printer, it also has more awkward special-character printing than the Brother did. With the Brother, the last special character you typed is the active selection if you hit the 'Sym' key. With the Epson, you have to drill down to its section, then select it, with the cursor keys, EVERY SINGLE TIME. I really wish these printers had a few programmable buttons (say, 2-4) that could be programmed for the characters/symbols YOU use a lot (in my case, the arrows).
If I could find a printer capable of wrap-type 3/4" labels with ~6 characters per rotated line, ideally able to repeat 2-4 lines once or twice, map printed arrows to hardkeys, with dedicated number keys and able to retract the label after cutting so I wouldn't have to trim one end, whose label glue could survive brief skin contact, I'd be delighted.
