Battery Labels
A battery label has a harder life than the product suggests. It sits on a surface that gets warm in use, it may meet electrolyte if a cell ever vents, it gets abraded in a charger or a tool, and on a cylindrical cell it is wrapped around a small diameter with almost no flat area to grip.
Heat, abrasion and the shrink sleeve
Most cylindrical cells arrive already wearing a printed shrink sleeve, which is smooth, slightly waxy and low energy. Anything you add on top has to key to that rather than to metal, and a general-purpose adhesive will not. Pack housings are usually ABS or polycarbonate, easier but often textured, which cuts the real contact area more than people expect.
So the construction is synthetic throughout: polyester or vinyl facestock rather than paper, the print under a laminate so it survives being pushed in and out of a charger, and an adhesive chosen for the specific housing. Where the surface is textured or slightly oily from moulding release agent, the rubber hybridised acrylic on our durable labels page is usually the answer.
Small labels carrying a lot of information
Battery labels are dense. Chemistry, capacity, voltage, polarity, manufacturer and date coding, warnings, disposal marking and a barcode, on a surface that may be an inch and a half wide. That is a layout problem before it is a printing one.
Two things we do about it. A wrap-around label uses the whole circumference rather than one panel, which is often the difference between readable and not. And we will tell you before the artwork is finished if the copy will not fit at a legible size, which is cheaper than finding out on press. Serial numbers, batch codes and barcodes print variable on the same pass.
Transport and disposal markings
Cells and packs are shipped under rules that apply to the goods rather than to the label, and those rules have specific markings attached to them. We will print whatever markings you tell us to print, at the size and colour you specify, on stock that will survive the journey. What your product is required to carry, and which transport class it falls under, is a question for your compliance adviser or your carrier. We set type; we do not classify dangerous goods. Outer packaging and pallet labels are worth speccing at the same time.
Ordering battery labels
No minimums, so a pilot production run gets real labels rather than something printed in the office. Tell us the cell or the housing, its diameter and label-able height, the environment and whether you are overprinting anything yourself, and we will spec it. Free samples if you want to run one through a charge cycle first.
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Popular label formats
Rolls, sheets and die-cut shapes — paper, coated paper, waterproof poly and more.
Need custom battery labels?
Tell us your product, size and quantity — we'll recommend the right material and send free samples.