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Verifying
Preprinted Codes
Each bar code must meet accuracy requirements for its application,
and test parameters include height and width specifications as well
as ink coverage and correct information. Before the marriage of
stroboscopic technology to cameras and software, it was difficult
to verify bar code quality and, hence, FDA regulations were not
as strictly enforced as they could be.
Until now. "FDA
has stepped up its enforcement because the technology is there to
verify compliance," says Tim Lydell, sales and marketing director,
Label Vision Systems (Peachtree City, GA). The firm supplies off-line
and in-line bar code verification systems to converters.
"Today's
systems can verify 60 bar codes per second in a single line,"
he says. "If a web is eight channels wide, we can verify 480
per second. It's the strobe-lighting technology and software that
makes it possible."
Label Vision
Systems hooked up in the mid 1990s with Unilux Inc. (Saddle Brook,
NJ), a designer and manufacturer of stroboscopic surface inspection
systems used worldwide in the printing and converting industries.
"The strobe is faster than a laser, and that enables us to
read each bar code horizontally or vertically, every 0.006 in. of
the entire bar code," Lydell says. "A laser can only read
a very small section on every barcode because it doesn't have the
speed to complete multiple lines at the high speeds required by
printers or packagers. What the strobe does is freeze the image
of each section, and that allows a camera in the read unit to send
the entire image to the computer for analysis."
Printers, Lydell
adds, can position verification systems either in-line at the press
or as it is processed in the gluing machines.
Product
Information:
LVS® 9000 Data Sheet (requires
Adobe
Acrobat Reader)
LVS®
3200 Data Sheet (requires Adobe
Acrobat Reader)
LVS®
6000 Data Sheet (requires Adobe
Acrobat Reader)
More information:
Label
Vision Systems, Inc.
101 Auburn
Court
Peachtree City, GA 30269
1-800-432-9430
+1 770-487-6414
www.lvs-inc.com
Copyright ©2002
Pharmaceutical & Medical Packaging News
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