More and more consumers want personalized products tailored precisely to their needs – from customized bicycles to self-mixed muesli and individualized printed Coke bottles to unique travel suitcases. The trend does not stop at the home either. And so kitchen equipment should also be designed as individually as possible.
Even the most neatly printed or perfectly etched barcodes can eventually degrade to the point of unreadability. As parts move through the various production operations, harsh environmental conditions may cause enough damage or distortion to their barcodes to cause no-reads. Damage can include scratches, tears, blotches, stains, debris and more.
Variations in the printing or marking method of barcodes and direct part marks (DPMs) – including poor ink distribution, incorrect thermal printer heat settings, or uneven pressure in surface abrasion – can hamper readability. Since no-reads can make production inefficient, it’s important to understand the types of print/mark inconsistencies and their causes.
Barcodes have several mandatory features that help them stay readable. If any of these are missing, a barcode imager or laser scanner may fail to capture the information contained within the symbol. When that happens, wasted time and product could be the result. For this reason, it’s essential to keep these key elements intact.
To extract data from a barcode, a reader must be able to differentiate between the symbol’s light and dark elements. If there’s insufficient contrast between them, the reader may be unable to distinguish the barcode from its substrate. This would cause a no-read, which in turn could result in wasted time and unnecessary amounts of scrapped product.
Rittal and EPLAN are starting the New Year by offering a chance to make their customers’ value-creating processes faster, more economical and more exact, with a value-filled event entitled “Panel building. Made smarter.” This is a great opportunity to attend this event live from anywhere around the World.
Automation solutions provider Omron Automation Americas has recently been honored with an Outstanding Achievement Award from Renton, WA-based automation tooling systems company ATS Automation. The award was presented in recognition of Omron’s valued support during the COVID-19 epidemic, particularly with regards to a recent project involving the construction of new equipment that will test for the novel coronavirus.
As a regionally based company, the Zimmer Group has a special responsibility for environmental protection in the region. The sparing use of resources and entrepreneurial action in harmony with nature are important elements of its corporate philosophy. The 40th anniversary in 2020 was the occasion for the medium-sized company to convert its production to a sustainable CO2-neutral system.
As an engineer, the responsibility to adopt not just the latest, but the safest technologies, never goes away. Protecting people and machinery has become, quite simply, industry’s number one priority. Safety first. Always.
Omron are always looking towards the future and taking steps to get there. They know that manufacturers could benefit greatly from stimulating their production equipment’s functionality before constructing it. Although this is a challenging endeavor, Omron are tackling it by bringing logic emulation and machine simulation under a single umbrella.
IMO’s 2nd Generation iView Advanced HMI Controller, as IMO Field Sales Engineer Jason Hannah explains below, was driven by the industry’s rapid pace of change. The 2nd generation has IoT functionality, allowing for remote connectivity either by the HMI In Hand phone app or VNC server.
When embarking on their digitalisation / IIot course, machine and plant manufacturers are often unsure how to approach things, which steps come first, which can wait and which may be entirely superfluous. This article sums up the current experiences of mechanical engineering customers of the HARTING Technology Group and shows how this important but also tremendously multifaceted topic can be mastered.
In this article, we will discuss a KEB drive feature called Voltage Stabilization. This post is part of a series that highlights different KEB drive features and how they can be utilized to optimize motor performance.
What if customizing your factory automation could be as easy as downloading an app? That’s the reality Bosch Rexroth seeks to provide with the ctrlX AUTOMATION system. Dubbed the ‘smartphone of automation’, the ctrlX AUTOMATION system seeks to make automation more user friendly.
No business can succeed on its own. Relationships are at the core of any business. Whether it’s with customers, employees, suppliers, or even competitors, successful companies build and nurture strong, mutually beneficial relationships.
For manufacturers seeking to improve system design, promote easy integration and enable rapid diagnostics of equipment issues, it helps to have a safety solution that supports a variety of networking options and minimizes hardware requirements. Omron’s new Stand-Alone Safety Kits are uniquely designed to do just that.