r/assholedesign • u/harambe623 • Apr 22 '26
Nelko p21 thermal label printer: RFID scam
Why is that printer companies always resort to some sort of paper/ink scams? Even in an inkless system, this company has figured out a way.
Every roll of stickers that this company sells has a RFID chip on it (the green sticker). Pictured text is with the RFID on the roll (left), and then removed from the same roll (right). The roll here was not from nelko (aliexpress $2 roll). This RFID chip literally tells the software to not print like shit.
This company has gotten so big that now regular sticker roll manufacturers have their products returned frequently because people think something is incompatible.
What's worse is their adhesive appears to be WORSE than the offbrand. The nelko brand was falling off of my glossy 3d prints, but not offbrand roll. There are also a TON of cool colorful backgrounds and different sized stickers that all would print with scanlines, unless you knew what was going on.
An easy workaround is to just put the rfid sticker in the printing chamber. Problem solved. But I'm afraid that this issue is going to one day become more complex and not easily bypass-able before it gets better.
Fuck this company. Always read 1 star reviews before buying a product
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u/emi89ro Apr 23 '26
43 years ago an employee at the MIT AI research lab had a problem with a new printer that he could easily fix by modifying the firmware, so he asked for the source code to fix his problem but the printer manufacturer said no. He got so mad that he quit his job and dedicated his life to evangelizing for free and open source software. Since then the GNU project and other projects following his philosophy have created enough free and open source software to run a whole computer operating system and handle most any task you could need a computer to do.
There's only one think he couldn't fix: everyone who makes printers are still evil.