Hi,
Over the years I've had several Dymo Labelmanager PnP label printers, currently I have three of them connected to my office computer to support 6/9/12mm D1 tapes simultaneously. Otherwise a really neat printer, but it seems to me that whatever you do (keep it always on / disconnect it for most of time), its internal 8.4V Li-Ion battery will die within 2--3 years of use. What makes this especially aggravating is that the original Dymo replacement battery is extravagantly expensive and very few 3rd parties carry the battery and if they do, it is still quite expensive.
Looks like Dymo got it wrong when they designed their USB--to--Li-Ion charger and it manages to overcharge the battery and destroy it eventually. I measured the Rint of one 2.5y old non-functional battery and it was close to 3.5ohm, so...
One of my coworkers suggested to me that why do we not remove the battery altogether and replace it with a power supply...and that was what we did. :-) Basically, we took a 9VDC surplus desktop power supply, connected a 1N400x (I think 1N4007) diode in series of the plus wire (to prevent the Dymo from even trying to "charge" the power supply), and then soldered this to a pair of small probe clips that we could fit inside the battery compartment (remember, the battery itself had already been removed). All that was remaining was to make a small nick into the PnP cassette door at the rear, to make room route the power wires out of Dymo.
Works perfectly, Dymo reports "100% NOT charging" all the time and prints happily ever after... I have had all three of my PnPs connected (in parallel) to one 9VDC/1A power supply for over 3 months now and I could not be happier... :-)
Some day I might take a photo or two of the arrangement if anyone is interested.
Cheers,
Ari
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