I finally got around to labeling my chips last night. I came up with a few ideas that I haven't seen on the board yet, so I thought I'd share.
Idea #1 - Color Matching to your own printer...
I tried the color codes for the Nexgen Bees that I found on the web, and they didn't match out of my Canon printer, so I did my own color matching. I printed a color wheel onto a blank sheet of the glossy label paper so I could see exactly what color would best match the chip colors on the paper I would actually be using. After printing the color wheel, I moved the chip around the sheet until I found the exact color for the part of the chip I was trying to match. I also printed a grid pattern on the color wheel so that I could see exactly where the color I chose was on the printout and match it to the same location on the digital illustrator file, then I used the eyedropper tool to get the RGB (or CMYK) codes for that color.
Idea #2 - Chip Protection using Clear Labels...
I ordered clear labels for laserjet printers to use as a protective layer for the glossy inkjet labels I was going to use for the actual image. The clear labels for laserjet have a silky matte finish, are very thin, and are somewhat water resistant (inkjet printing won't stick). After applying the inkjet label with the printed image on it, I put the clear laserjet label over it. These clear labels are thin enough to put on top of the printed label on a nexgen chip without changing the stackable thickness of the chip. When I run my finger over the labels on the chip, I can tell they are still recessed from the perimiter of the chip, and the labeled chip stack vs. the nonlabeled chip stack proves this. It is twice as much time to do the labeling, but the end result looks and feels great, and I didn't have to worry about an even finish or incomplete coverage of a protective spray. I haven't tried a beer test yet, but this will definitely pass a sweaty hands test. Chip handling and chip shuffling feel great. The surface of the protective label feels like vellum paper as opposed to the tackiness of inkjet printing on glossy photo paper.
Idea #3 - Tips on printer to label alignment...
Make sure to always use the same paper feed orientation for your label sheets when putting them into your printer. Here, I marked the ends of the sheets that I will feed into the printer first so that I don't get alignment problems if the labels are not cut exactly symmetrically and I accidentally switch the paper orientation direction.
Finally, I tried setting up my Illustrator label template to the label sheet by first printing only the corner circles to save ink, then shifting my template file slightly each time until all 4 corners lined up perfectly. I actually even had to put in about a 0.05 degree rotation to the sheet because of the way my printer feeds the paper through.
Because the 4 corners printed dead on, I thought was ready to print my first full label sheet. However, when I printed a full sheet, the rows of printed label graphic would slowly creep upwards in relation to the label cutout. So even if the top row of labels printed perfectly, by the time I got to the 9th row of labels (bottom of the sheet), the graphic was shifted upwards about 0.1"! I attribute this to my printer, where the feed rate while printing is marginally different than the feed rate while not printing. That means on my label alignment test pass when I only printed the corners, the printer would print the first row, feed 80% of the paper without doing any printing, then print the last row and give me perfect alignment. But when I printed the actual labels on the full length of the sheet, the feed rate varied by 0.1" by the time I got to the last label. To get perfect label alignment during actual label printing, I had to take that 0.1" and divide that by the nine rows of labels. So instead of the 1.125" between label centers, I actually had to create my template to have 1.1375" between the rows! Seems funny, but the end result was dead on perfectly centered label on the entire sheet. This is probably a printer specific problem, but something you might keep in mind if you get the same problem as I had.
Perfectly centered labels....
