pee touch

The Brother P-Touch PT-80 label maker is not good!!

This label maker sucks down batteries like there is no tomorrow. It runs off 4 AAA batteries and it does not come with a wall power adapter. I kid you not, with brand new fresh batteries, I was able to print only SIX labels. Fifty one letters, in six labels and then my batteries were toast. It’s not only me, there are 14 one-star reviews on Amazon.com that concur. Apparently the processor power management is so bad, that it will even kill your batteries while you don’t use it.

This might be forgivable if it included a wall adapter. If you want to use it on the go, out at the club or maybe label things while you are nature hiking, you can. If you want to use it at home like most everyone else, you can plug it in.

BUT NO! You are forced to be a battery slave. At first I thought maybe Brother was owned by Duracell or Energizer and this was a ploy to get you to buy more batteries. From what I can tell, however, Brother is not linked to any battery companies.

Luckily, the case is mostly empty inside and I had the parts around to add a wall power adapter!

power jack

Drilled a hole and super glued a barrel connector inside.

outside plug

looks like it’s supposed to be there!

voltage regulator

quickly wired LM317 voltage regulator, allows any DC power adapter from 8V to 37V to be used.

sucks less!

all done.