Contemporary hand-held labelling gun inks involve complex chemistry, as opposed to simply being a plain ink. With developments in contemporary science and chemical engineering, complex and beneficial qualities can be built into the hand-held labelling gun dye. This enables a number of advanced uses. What applications have driven this development?

The number of uses for labelling guns is pretty much endless. Given how cheap they are, the little hand-held label gun can go toe-to-toe with a great number of different demands. There are numerous possible business and laboratory process uses. They can find use in many short-run processes and food production processes as well as in quality control monitoring.

The simple hand-held labelling gun delivers a label that can be of solution-specific material and glue, not only imparting specific information but ink too. If a particular colour of ink is used, this can convey specific information such as day of the week of production or processing. Not only the label but the ink can be used to pass on extra information. The use of heat sensitive ink can add another variable for the passing of information on the label. It is possible to have an ink that oxidises at a certain temperature or temperature range, to confirm a particular heat has been met. This could signal whether or not food has been heated to the correct temperature to sell or if medical tools have been sterilised at the right temperature.

In medical sterilization applications, the tools can be labelled prior to firing. The label includes a date marked in 'heat immune' pigment to signal the sterilization date and a date to signal the day the sterilization becomes overdue, again in 'heat immune' pigment. In between the firing date and the expiry date, the label has a pre-printed strip of heat-sensitive dye. On oxidizing in heat, the ink changes colour from brown to black.

It is possible to acquire inks for the labels that colour change at a number of temperature thresholds. Label material and label gum limit the temperatures at which this thermo-chromatic ink can work.