With the variety of bar codes found around the market, have you ever wondered how those monochromatic tags are made. Try looking around and you would probably notice that they’re almost everywhere! So how do you suppose they mass produce bar code tags? Is it a tricky process? You may be thinking if it is since every individual product which is bar code labelled is assigned a unique set of codes that represent the data it stores. This then means that dissimilar products and services also have dissimilar bar code tags. Bearing that in mind, let’s go back to the question to how these bar code tags are made.
It’s safe to say the bar codes are symbols because they symbolize or represent the data and information which is embedded upon them. The data contained are mostly the details of the particular subject (item, service, or person) they’re attached to. As data representations, they hold the form of various lines, bars, spaces, numbers or even alphabets which encode the data. They are mainly printed through specialized printers that produce copies of these particular tags. Bar code printers have a huge variety, and choosing one for use must be done in full consideration to what environment you intend to make use of it. And as we all know, there are several types of bar codes out there (1d, 2d or 3d) and all of them may vary in regard of the shape or form they take. The bar code printers may also vary depending on what kind of bar code you wish to produce.
Have you ever witnessed a sales clerk around supermarkets or groceries who tags items with bar codes? If yes, have you noticed the machine that produces the tags? Those kinds of bar code printers are specially made for the retail environment, and they chiefly produce bar code tags in a form of stickers which can easily be attached to retail products. It looks like a handheld device with several buttons in it. The device may carry inventory information and is used to produce tags for items. This kind of bar code printer is only one of the several kinds around. Bar code printing may be classified in two ways which is Thermal bar code printing or Direct Thermal bar code printing. What’s the difference between them? Thermal bar code printing is flexible since it can support a number of symbols that is used for printing bar codes. It’s known to compatibly work with a variety of items unlike the Direct Thermal printing wherein the bar code gets printed directly on the designated label. Thermal printing uses a ribbon that gets heated to etch the bar code image using a print head. The only downside to this is that changing the ribbon may take time which is not advised around manufacturing. Direct Thermal on the other way around, does printing faster since it directly prints bar code labels. There are larger bar code printers that can do both Thermal and Direct Thermal printing, so you don’t really have to worry about deciding what the better choice is.