Inlays/Labels/Tags

William Frick & Co.'s Pipeline SmartMark Tags for Harsh Environments

Building on its long relationship with the Gas/Water Pipeline industry, William Frick & Co. (www.fricknet.com) has expanded its SmartMark RFID offering to include tags specifically designed for pipes. These durable, patent pending RFID tags make inspections simple, provide solid read ranges of up to 15 feet, and can record over 200 characters of text. Best of all, their rugged construction gives them a service life of up to 10 years.

"We've concentrated on more permanent installations and applications for our SmartMark tags, " explains Evie Bennett, Vice President, William Frick & Co. "Many of our clients need solutions that can take hard usage and still perform. So, we've created impact resistant, fully-encapsulated, and chemical and temperature resistant tags that stand up to harsh conditions and keep performing. "

The new pipe tags offer a unique design, integrating a rubber loop that securely fastens to pipes with simple cable ties. Their vulcanized rubber design makes them impact and temperature resistant and provides reliable performance even when placed against metal. Other SmartMark designs include encapsulated, domed, and unique SnapAround tags. With extended read ranges that can be tailored to your application, they offer users a reliable Gen 2 passive RFID solution for use in harsh environments. SmartMark tags can be customized for specific frequencies and applications and Frick regularly develops prototypes for a diverse list of major manufacturing clients.

Alien Technology® Expands RFID Leadership with Two Additions to Its Squiggle® Portfolio of EPC Gen 2 Tags

Alien Technology (www.alientechnology.com) announces the expansion of its leading portfolio of Alien Squiggle EPC Gen 2 RFID tags with the introduction of two new form factors for case- and item-level tracking in the consumer packaged goods, retail, transportation, government, and defense industries. Together, the new tags represent the maturation of the market—with smaller, higher performance tags enabling more sophisticated tagging and broader implementation.

"With the enhanced portfolio of Squiggle tags, Alien® has a robust variety of new high-performance inlays and tags, powered by our industry-leading Alien H2 chip, " says Mike Hetrick, Alien's Product Director of Global Consumables. "The new item-level and case tag form factors have received great interest from our converters and we are excited about the opportunities for our growing portfolio of Squiggle tags powered by the industry leading Alien H2 chip. "

The newest member of the Alien family, the diminutive Squiggle-SQ (ALN-9529), delivers exceptional range in the item-tagging arena despite being the size of a postage stamp. Due to its unique combination of size and performance, the tag is ideal for use in the pharmaceutical segment as well as other high-value, item-level applications. Tuned to operate optimally in the 902 to 928 MHz frequency range, the Squiggle-SQ will be available for volume production in December.

Delivering the same outstanding range and sensitivity of its namesake, the Squiggle-SH is designed to meet the global supply chain's requirement for an inlay that works with a 3-inch label. The Squiggle-SH is available for sampling in December with volume production in Q1, 2008.

RSI ID Technologies Announces Class of Tamper-Evident RFID Tags

RSI ID Technologies (www.rsiid.com) announces the release of a class of tamper-evident RFID tags. The tamper-evident RFID tags feature special components and properties, which provide the tags with their unique characteristics.

The first tag in the class is a destructible RFID tag that upon visual inspection looks and is programmed the same as standard construction tags, but when applied to the product, reveals its unique properties and causes the tag to come apart when an attempt to remove the tag is made.

This tamper-evident class of RFID tags also includes the development of tags that offer additional levels of security ranging from the ability to leave behind part of the RFID antenna to incorporating a tamper-evident material construction, which when removed, leaves behind a residual adhesive or an image identifying that the label has been tampered with.

"Tamper-evident materials have been used for some time in a variety of applications," says Wolf Bielas, CEO of RSI ID Technologies. "It was a natural progression to develop a way to integrate the use of these visual tamper-evident technologies along with RFID for those companies that want to combine and leverage the best of both technologies. "

Confidex Halo™ On-Metal RFID Tag

Confidex (www.confidex.net) announces the introduction of the company's new Confidex Halo passive UHF EPC Gen 2 RFID tag. It has been undergoing customer trials for retail logistics and aerospace applications and combines advanced lightweight materials and a small footprint with durability and on-metal performance.

"Our current on-metal tags have been proven to exceed customer expectations for durability and performance," says Torbjörn Andersson, Confidex Vice President, Sales and Business Development." By working closely with our customers and authorized solution partners, we have developed an encapsulated on-metal tag that meets our high standards and supports a broad variety of challenging applications."

Customer trials currently underway using Confidex Halo tags include tracking returnable transit items and storage shelf identification. The Confidex Halo is also being used to support industry initiatives for tracking parts on commercial aircraft in the Aerospace industry.

"Confidex Halo was ideal in terms of size and performance for our needs," says Sven Jürgens, RFID Project Manager from REWE Group in Germany. "The tags are used to identify shelf locations of goods by forklift readers in our management system and the innovative new tags, together with the reader antennas, which Confidex also supplied to us, are expected to provide better system reliability."

The Confidex Halo RFID tag measures 14 mm x 60 mm x 11.7 mm and is manufactured using high strength temperature-resistant plastic that provides IP68 protection. The product has been designed to be easily attached by adhesive or magnetic tape, and also with cable ties for example to metallic cables or pipes. The new design also makes it ideal for tracking IT assets such as blade servers and network routers.

With a read range of 3-4 meters on metal, the Confidex Halo RFID tag works well with both fixed and handheld readers. Offered initially with Impinj's Monza 96-bit EPC-compliant silicon, Confidex will offer a variety of standards-based, extended memory options as silicon providers make those chips available.

"The aerospace industry is very interested in passive, EPC standard extended memory tags," says Kevin Donahue, Confidex Business Development Director, North America. "We are working closely with our silicon providers and leading reader manufacturers to deliver tags that meet the specific needs of this important industry segment."