Check out the full report here.

One item that will be of interest to our Defense Contractor customers is that the GAO asks the DoD to do a better job of putting the IUID clauses in contract and making sure that they are completed correctly. A lot of our customers have been confused by the contract IUII requirements – the process could work much more smoothly if the requirements were better explained on a lot of contracts.

At the end of the report, are nine recommendations made by GAO, along with the DoD responses to them. Recommendation 5 is interesting because in the response, DoD talks about how the DCMA is charged with reviewing the IUID requirements with the contractor and ensuring that the marking on the parts meets the standards.

One amusing point in the report is that the photograph of a dataplate (Figure 1 in the report) seems to have an incorrectly formatted Datamatrix barcode – please don’t use it as an example of how to construct a UID.

Are you a DoD contractor? How have you been doing with the MIL-STD-130 IUID rules?

Thanks to the nice folks at A2B Tracking for the heads up on this.

Our partners at Datamax-O’Neil are sponsoring our survey, which ends  midnight on Wednesday, May 30, 2012. The winner will be chosen from the pool of participants on Friday, June 1, 2012. The winner will be notified by email, and announced in our June edition of the Labeling News Update.

So what are you waiting for? Click here to begin. Please, only one entry per person. Good luck!

The “Consumer Perceptions of Food Technology” survey shows that 24% percent of respondents said they would prefer more information on labels, including data on nutrition, ingredients, and potential allergens and their side effects. That’s up from 18% in a 2010 survey of consumer perceptions of food technology.

Considering the recent Mad Cow scare, and the almost-weekly reports of “pink slime”, “meat glue”, and other unappealing ingredients that wind up in processed food, it’s no wonder that people want to know more about what’s in their food, and if it’s safe to eat. In response to the rising concerns regarding food nutrition and safety, the USDA in now providing in-store nutrition information for food safety and inspection on ground meat and poultry. The mandatory labeling and signs give consumers nutritional data, and also information on safe food preparation and storage.

For more information about the IFIC, and to see the results of their survey, you can download their findings in PDF form. The survey provides data on ”public awareness and perceptions of various aspects of plant and animal biotechnology, measures confidence in the safety of the U.S. food supply, and attitudes toward food labeling.”

Do you need better labeling for your food products? Contact us at (800) 325-5260 and see how we can help you get the labels you need to comply with USDA regulations.

This trend means that for this “distributed printing” model, the tradition industrial printers such as the Zebra Xi and the Datamax H-Class become overkill – too costly and take up too much space.

While the number of labels that are produced at each node of the printing network will be less than when using a central printer serving all nodes, the type of label and the quality of the printing remains the same. This creates a problem for many smaller printer models.

If you read Labeling News regularly, you’ll have noticed that I’ve never been happy with the small printers that the major manufacturers offer and I’m always wishing for a smaller (but still industrial build quality) printer that we can offer to our clients.

Enter the Cognitive C-Series.

The C-Series isn’t new – it has been around for a while – but this is the first time I’ve had one in the test lab (my office) at the WincoPlex to put through its paces.

Cognitive claims that the C-Series should be the only label printer an enterprise needs and it can handle all the jobs that would be done on both desktop and industrial printers.

Out of the box, the printer feels to be robustly built and is certainly small – here it is posing with my favorite small industrial printer, the Datamax M-Class. Indeed, if the C-Series provides me with an M-Class in a smaller package, I’ll be happy man.

Let’s see how close it comes…

The Model Range

The C-Series comes in both 2 inch and 4 inch wide versions and customers can choose 203 or 300 DPI resolutions. As with most thermal printers, both direct thermal and thermal transfer modes are supported.

Label rolls can be full size, up to 8 inches in diameter and ribbon rolls of up to 5,500 inches in length.

Our test printer is a 4 inches wide, 300 DPI version with thermal transfer printing.

Overall Design

As we’ve come to expect these days, the covers of the printer are plastic, but the mail components mounting the printhead and the ribbon feed are more robustly designed, mainly from metal.

In order to get everything to fit in the small available space, some creativity has been used with the printhead mount and latching mechanism – nicely done, although obviously not as roomy for loading the supplies as with larger printers.

The printer has a full set of connectivity ports (I’m always happy to see this) with Ethernet, USB, USB host and a little mini serial/parallel port that would need an adaptor to utilize. To keep the overall size small, the power supply is an external brick.

There is a small LCD display on top of the printer which allows access to the menu system via 5 buttons. The screen isn’t as good as those used on some other printers, but it works OK and the menu system is easy to navigate (I did have one problem in the menu which will be mentioned later)

As is usual these days, the printer is able to emulate the programming files of competitors products to make it easy to drop into environments where other printer brands are used.

Unfortunately Cognitive doesn’t build its printers in the US, the test printer was made in Taiwan – I seem to recall being told that current production models are made in Mexico.

Loading the Media

I have to admit, I’ve yet to find a printer where the loading of the labels and ribbons couldn’t be improved and the Cxi is no exception. As you might expect, the need to be able to handle full size rolls of labels in such a small space has required some compromise.

The ribbons (as supplied by Cognitive) come in those little little kits with the full roll of ribbon being attached to the rewind core in a package. Using this makes the ribbon quite easy to install, but I’m not certain about the availability of other ribbon brands for these machines.

The ribbon rolls have 0.5 inch diameter cores with notches that align which little spring loaded gizmos to mount the ribbon rolls.

To be fair, it seems to work OK, but I’d much prefer a way to mount larger diameter cores, even if an adaptor is needed, al la Datamax E-Class.

The labels have to sit on a little plastic core that sits in the printer. Mine had a tendency to fall on the floor and roll under things – it would be a good idea to get a couple of spares, I’d say.

Once this part is figured out, if you want to run full size rolls, you need to open up the covers to make room. This works, but does seem to be a little of an afterthought.

The labels run on the centerline of the printer (I love this!), but other than the spring loaded locator for the label roll, there isn’t really much in the way of positive guides for the labels. This isn’t a big deal for large labels, but not great for the small labels we would want to run. Again, a quick look at the E-Class would show how a positive label guide can be incorporated into a small printer.
I should mention here that I really like the way Cognitive has designed the adjustable lable sensor into the machine – very neat and works well.

Using the Printer

Once the little plastic label core has been retrieved from under the desk (I’m getting way too old to be crawling around the office on my knees!) and the labels and ribbon installed, it is time to go some printing.

The printer came with a resource CD, but I surfed over to Seagull Scientic and downloaded the Seagull driver for the printer. I’ve been playing around with the new BarTender 10 so this is what I wanted to use for some test printing.

Driver downloaded and installed and connected by USB, everything worked the first time. I only had the one roll of wax ribbon for the printer so didn’t get to do any testing on polyester or polyamide labels, but did get to use some small paper ones. (I’ve since run some tests on polyester labels and resin ribbons, with good results).

As expected, the printer works fine. When sending a label format, the print process starts right away and the printer is plenty fast enough for most jobs.

The only issue I experienced was with adjusting the print to get it on the center line of the label. It seemed to not be possible to do this from the printer front panel (the printer froze and had to be rebooted every time I tried) and the configuration software on the CD failed to connect to the printer, either by USB or Ethernet. A call to tech support didn’t resolve the issue and I got busy with too many other things to get to the bottom of this, even though the nice Cognitive people offered to help.

Conclusions

The first time I saw the C-Series printer, I really liked the idea of what it might be capable of. It seemed to me that it really could be my long sought after small footprint, high quality machine. It does come very close, but isn’t really a printer for very accurate printing on small labels – I rather wish I was running the design team because the C-Series could be developed into just what I want.

What I Liked

• Size – not much bigger than an E-Class or GX, the C-Series is a perfect size to use in small spaces in manufacturing cells.
• Build Quality – nicely made, with some clever ideas to fit everything into such a small space.
• Connectivity – the demo unit has all the connections I need.
• The Label Sensor – simple to adjust and works well.

What I Didn’t Like

• Resolution – for our market, 600 DPI is really a must
• Handling Small Labels – this really ties in with the resolution thing; the C-Series doesn’t seem to have been designed with tiny labels in mind. For most users, probably not a problem.
• Handling Large Rolls of Labels – although the specs confirm that 8 inch diameter rolls can be handled, it seems as though this might have been added as an afterthought.

Who Would Use It?

There are a number of applications where the C-Series makes a lot of sense.

For a client looking for a more robust alternative to the clamshell printers such as the Zebra GX or Datamax E-Class, this is a very viable option. Having a larger label roll capacity than most small small printers, gives the C-Series an advantage here and this is certainly a much better built machine than the plastic models.

Use printers like the M-Class or the Zebra ZM400 but very limited space? The C-Series could be a good alternative. Sure, there are compromises and it isn’t as easy to load the media – but heck, it will fit in your small space so stop complaining!

What Would I Add To The Next Version?

If this were my product, the C-Series MkII would include the following:

• Better handing of small label sizes
• Ability to use full size ribbon cores
• More positive label guides
• Higher resolution
• More robust configuation software

All in all, the Cxi is a very interesting product with some great ideas built in. Nice to see a label printer company with some original thinking.

Do you use this cognitive printer or need an industrial strength label printer with small space requirements? I’d love to hear from you at 603-598-1553.

The best part of the old saying “you get what you pay for” is the rare time when it isn’t true – and you get more than what you paid for. When managing inventory for a small or medium-sized business, every dollar you save can make a difference. Here are five barcode printers that cost under $500, handle a variety of tasks, and give you great value for every penny.

Zebra MZ220 Mobile Barcode/Receipt Printer – $389

This tiny printer is perfect for a business where employees need to be as mobile as possible. It weighs less than a pound, so it can be worn comfortably on a belt while attached to a handheld scanner by USB or IrDA. For about $80 more, you can get the MZ220 with Bluetooth capabilities to use with smart phones. It also prints receipts on demand, in addition to barcode labels. Zebra products are known in the industry for reliability, so you can be assured this is a good entry-level mobile printer.

Brother QL-650 PC Label Printer- $209

No ink, toners or ribbons to replace – the Brother QL-650 direct thermal printer is fast, at up to 56 labels printed per minute, and inexpensive. It works as a stand-alone or with a PC – so you can print a label even after you’ve turned the computer off. Print resolution is sharp at 300 dpi, and the Brother has the flexibility to print 16 types of bar codes – including QR codes. Fast, efficient, and flexible, this label printer delivers a lot for less than $210!

Wasp WPL305 Desktop Barcode Printer – $475

The Wasp WPL305 might be the most expensive printer on this list, but when you see the features and capabilities you’ll understand why. It comes with a 2 year warranty, 8 megs of DRAM, 2 megs of flash memory, USB and RS232 connectivity, and a wide 4.25 inch print width. It can print direct thermal and thermal transfer, which makes it great for inventory control, asset tags, shelf labels and location labels. The Wasp WPL305 base model is packed with features, but if you need more there are a range of memory and feature upgrades.

Zebra LP2824 Desktop Barcode Printer – $159.00

Another entry level desktop printer, this Zebra is great for a small office that needs to print shelf labels, shipping labels or other light, general barcode printing. It’s perfect for a pharmacy to print medication labels. The 2.2 inch printing width limits label size, and the direct thermal printing requires paper-only labels. But, the price is right – the lowest in this list, the quality is great, and if you don’t need anything more – why spend more?

Zebra TLP2844 Desktop Barcode Printer -$299

We end with a third Zebra barcode printer, the TLP2844, which is a versatile machine for light, general office label printing. It’s a ribbon printer, so printing is possible on a wide range of materials including paper and polyester. Thermal transfer printing from a ribbon ensures your printed labels will last. Its 4+ inch print width adds additional format flexibility, and Zebra offers accessories like label design software, dispensers and cutters to fit the TLP2844.

All of these printers offer an easy entry point into label and barcode printing. We’re fond of all of these for various purposes. But, if you need something a little different, there are plenty of other affordable barcode printers on the market.

SystemID is based in Plano, Texas. Focusing on improving efficiency and operation savings for their customers, System ID has turned their expertise into the largest customer base in the industry.

Happily, it turns out this wasn’t the case and the company has announced the new PM43 and PM43C models.

Intermec’s legacy 3400 printers were really successful and there are still many thousands in use. The 2nd generation, the PM4i was somewhat underwhelming so we are really interested to see how the PM43 works out.

The look of the printer has certainly been improved, a nice little touch screen colour LCD replaces the awful display from the PM4i and the overall design is quite stylish in Intermec grey and blue.

The printer comes with serial, USB 2.0 and Ethernet as standard with plenty of optional connectivity including wireless and USB host.

I’m particularly interested in the PM43C version – very small and compact.

The PM43 comes with Intermec’s Precision Print feature – this should allow very accurate label registration, as we enjoyed on the now EOL Intermec 3240 model. The huge downside (I honestly don’t understand this at all!) is that the printer is still stuck with 400 DPI resolution. We have a lot of customers who need 600 DPI for their applications so the PM43 will not work for them. 203 and 300 DPI is available as one would expect.

The other major downside is that (like all Intermec printers) the new models are not made in the USA.

My colleague Harry, here at Winco, has had the opportunity for a hands-on session with the new printer and he reports that he likes it a lot.

I’m hoping we’ll be getting a PM43 to give a real test and review in the near future.

In the meantime, let me know (603-598-1553) if you’d like more info. You can download the specs from Intermec as well if you like.

Actually the whole concept of this show is very confusing, with three different exhibitions thrown together somewhat randomly in one room.

Back in the heyday of electronics manufacturing in New England, this show was Nepcon, specifically for that industry. These days the biggest part is BIOMEDevice, intended for people in medical device manufacturing.

The Boston Convention Center has been open for a few years now and is a first class facility. It is easy for exhibitors to get their booths into and out of the hall so both setting up and breaking down the show was simple for us.

We found that our booth was pretty busy both of the days of the show and we had some great conversations with both existing and potential customers.

The focus of our display was on using labels, barcoding and RFID to bring business improvements to manufacturers. As well as our Winco labels, we had Zebra label, Photo ID and RFID printers to demo as well as our Microscan verifier for MIL-STD-130 applications.

With a lot of engineers and manufacturing people from the medical device industry around, we were not surprised to be talking a lot about the new Unique Device Identification (UDI) rule from the FDA and the GS1 barcode standards that will be used to enable this.

One of the features of the show is an area set around for short presentations on topics likely to be of interest to show attendees – they call them Innovation Briefs. We gave the closing presentation on how 2D barcoding can be efficiently used in manufacturing.

All things considered, this was an enjoyable and successful show. A big thank you to everyone that visited with us and also to the great Winco folks for making it work so well!

Here are a couple of booth photos:

Didn’t see us at the show? No problem, give me a call at 603-598-1553 x237 if we can help with your label or barcoding.

We are not talking about the preprinted UPC codes you typically see on a retail point of sale item. These types of barcodes only require software that can generate the barcode, and then the barcodes are exported as pre-press artwork. On-demand applications use a variety of barcode standards, such as DataMatrix or Code 128, that allow for a substantial amount of data, plus graphics, and human readable text, which are printed as needed onto labels.

If you need to print barcodes for you labeling applications, then talk to us first. We can guide you in selecting the right barcode lableing software for your applications. Call us at 1-800-325-5260 to get started.

I came across this interesting “about” statement over at the Zebra Technologies website.

For a company that makes label printers (and some other things), this might seem to be rather odd. Stepping back a little and thinking of the actual uses of printed labels though, the idea of assets having a digital voice makes a lot of sense.

So what exactly is a “digital voice”? It means that an asset is able to communicate and to be able to pass on information. This information could be a description of the item, its condition, when it needs to have maintenance, where it is, where it is going, what its value is.

Since most items don’t have the ability to speak with us, we need to provide them with a little help. That can be as simple as as applying a label printed with a unique ID number.

By connecting this unique number to a back end database, we can keep all of the information pertaining to the item. This is exactly what the Department of Defense does with its IUID Marking Program, where every item has a unique ID number that is encoded into a 2D Datamatrix barcode. (You can learn more about this by downloading our MIL-STD-13o eBook)

If you are using a barcode or RFID based asset tracking system in your organization, you are using the same idea too.

Obviously using barcodes, the Digital Voice of our assets is rather passive – we get the embedded information, we have to interrogate the item with a barcode reader. Using RFID as the technology to carry the data adds another dimension – making it easier to retrieve data without relying on human intervention. This is the basis of the mythical Internet of Things.

The new V-Tag RFID tags from our partner Infinid Technologies really helps with item’s Digital Voice as well. Not only can they chat with us to let us know where they are, they can let us know their temperature, the humidity and the levels of shock and vibration they might have been subjected to.

Not only can our assets have a voice, they are starting to be pretty intelligent as well!

What about you? Do your assets talk to you? If you want them to, we can certainly help give them a voice!

The idea of the site was (and still is) to be a way of sharing great content that would be interesting to people in our industry and also help us promote our business; Winco Identification.

Unless identified as a guest post, all Labeling News content is original and produced by our own team. The Copyright is held by our company, Winco Identification Corp. We wanted to make it easy to share our content so the site is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

This allows anyone to copy, publish and share our work with the conditions that is is not altered in any way and that the work is attributed to Labeling News.

This means that should you publish a Labeling News article on your site, you are in violation of the license if you remove or change any of the content (including links and author tags) and we also insist on a link back to our original article.

In the event we find our content on-line that is not in compliance with our license, we will ask nicely that it is either brought into compliance or removed.

Several news sites already use Labeling News content and are happily working within our licensing. Everyone is welcome to join them.

If you have any questions on licensing Labeling News content, feel free to contact me at dholliday@wincoid.com