Barcodes are expensive. Can I make my own?

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Barcodes are made to very exacting standards, and barcodes that do not meet those standards can not easily be read in a barcode reader. Having said that, some people have made their own barcodes.

From: James Edwards jedwards@SOS.STATE.TX.US> I have a Breece Hill jukebox and I did it the hard (but free) way. I only needed 30 or 40 labels so I made a MS Word document, formatted the labels myself and used a little application to calculate the check digits. The last digit of the bar code is the check digit and can be calculated using a program from this web site: http://www.bizfonts.com/barcodeapp/

It is freeware and simple to use although the whole process is manual to include cutting out the labels. Like I said, I only needed 30 or 40 so the amount of work I had to do was minimal but if you have to do 100s of them, this would be very time consuming.

We created an excel sheet with an intelligent cell. in the cell you enter the barcode range you want to use 680001. It then automatically fills the sheet with a range of multiples of 30. We save the sheet with the name of the range so we know what we have use allready. 680001-30.xls or something like that. the entire page is the printed on matte photopaper from a local shop end result is perfectly good useable barcodes. We found out that most laserreaders need matte high quality thick paper. I fthe paper is too thin it shines through wich reduces performance. it's about 7 EURO's per 50 sheets. which is cheaper than the 1.2 EURO per barcode stroragetek dealers wanted me to pay.

We use about 1500 of them and add about 200 barcodes monthly for offsite storage. The barcodes are code 39 and the font is free downloadable for excel. The hardest part actually was to get the sheet just right so they fitted in the tapes after cutting them. mind the stars in front and at the end of the barcode I forgot those *|||||||* it needs the stars they are the start and finish markers of the barcode.

I found an excellent program for printing my own barcode labels. We purchased the LTO Barcode program for our office. The author's website is: http://www.jdtools.ca/

We bought the necessary labels at a local office supply store. I use the "permanent durable" labels, not paper.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the author other than being a satisfied user of his program.