Manufacturers of electronics, from home audio equipment to automotive keyless entry systems, are seeking a reliable, economical technique for uniquely identifying and tracking products through the manufacturing procedure, earnings supply and after-sale warranty verification. An autonomous, automated tracking system requires that an enduring, machine-readable code be applied to an internal printed circuit board to visually identify each item. The code must be durable enough to survive fabricating procedures involving wave solder and board cleaning, shouldn’t impact circuit performance, and has to store information in the little space on realestate conscious printed circuit boards.
Laser marking technology offers a means for permanently applying 2D matrix codes to board substrates. The high-resolution and high-accuracy of all beam-steered laser marking systems provides the means to generate well defined, higher reliability codes regardless of code dimensions. Laser marking additionally offers the user having a computer-controlled marking process for effortless execution into automatic product monitoring systems.
ECC 200 2 D Matrix Codes
Two dimensional symbologies encode information from printed circuit board manufacturers the form of a checker board pattern of cells that are senile. Specific Benefits of Data Matrix codes over conventional 1D Bar Codes comprise:
· Encode advice digitally, as opposed to the analog of data in conventional barcodes.
· Can adapt low-contrast printing directly on components without requiring a label
· Offer quite high information density – the highest among other shared 2D codes, this means that you can place a lot of data in a tiny area.
· They are scalable, meaning you could print them and read them at various levels of magnification – merely constrained by the resolution of their available printing and imaging techniques.
· because of the high data frequency inherent to Data Matrix codes, they also offer you builtin error-correction methods which allow fully recovering the information encoded at a Data Matrix symbol even though the mark is damaged and lost as much as 20% of the symbol.
· They’re read by camcorders as opposed to a scanned laser beam applied for reading traditional barcodes, meaning that they might be read in virtually any orientation.
ECC 200 Information Matrix could be the most popular 2 d symbology with extensive use in automotive, aerospace, electronics, semiconductor, medical instruments and other manufacturing unit-level traceability software. Data Matrix codes are typically not replacement conventional linear bar codes, but are used where traditional barcodes were overly large, did not provide sufficient storage capacity, or were unreadable.
Data Matrix Code Structure
Even the 2D matrix codes appear as a”checker board” with the respective sections (cells) in on on (white) or away (black) state) The code contains four different elements.
· The Finder”L” Layout is made up of good row of cells along the left border and underside of the code that orients the reader to the layout of the 2D code.
· The Clock Track is a sequence of on/off cells together the ideal border along with the code that designates the row/column depend on the reader.
· The Data Region is your design of both white and black cells within the L shaped pattern and the clock tracks that support the alphanumeric material of the code.
· The Silent Zone round the code must be free from some features which may be visible to this reader. The silent zone should be two rows/columns wide for codes constructed of square cells.
More realistic logo size for printed circuit boards can still contain a substantial quantity of information.