
by Industrial Print Magazine staff
Marking and coding solutions are prevalent in production lines across many industries. Typically found inline, but also the possibility of operating near line or even offline, these devices are in laser and inkjet options. The technology used depends on a host of factors like substrates or surfaces being printed and volume and speed requirements.
Above: Iberlinares chose the Domino Gx350i thermal inkjet printer to mark its ham and sausage packed in PE meat packaging film.
We looked into two Domino Amjet Inc. customers and the marking and coding technologies they chose for their factories. The company offers thermal inkjet, continuous inkjet, carbon dioxide (CO2) laser, and fiber laser printers.
Fine Meats
Iberlinares, which makes its home on the Iberian Peninsula—an area divided between Spain and Portugal—celebrates over 40 years of business in the production and commercialization of Iberian pork products. Both the ham and sausage is packed in polyethylene (PE) meat packaging films and then marked with specific codes for health and safety reasons.
When considering marking and coding technologies, Iberlinares engineers had a few requirements in mind. First, they needed a solution that could adapt to printing on multiple positions on the same or different products—on multiple production lines. Secondly, the printer had to keep up with the speed of the production line. Production is so fast at Iberlinares that a print only has one second to dry. So the ink not only has to adhere well to the PE film and be safe to use on food packaging, it must also dry quickly. Third, any printer installed in this environment needs to be able to function in varying ambient temperatures—and do so reliably.
To hit all three needs, Iberlinares turned to thermal inkjet. Specifically, it chose the Domino Gx-Series thermal inkjet printers. That series allows for a centralized controller to be configured up to 25 meters from the production line, with the controller able to work with four independently functioning printheads. The model selected by Iberlinares was the Gx350i, which according to Domino, is ideal for fast-paced production and track and trace applications, easy to operate, and simple to integrate for clean, clear codes.
The Domino Gx350i is compatible with Industry 4.0 standards thanks to the Domino Cloud centralized interface. It offers a small footprint with easy printhead integration and remote controller mounting. Print speeds reach up to 300 meters per minute for fast-paced production. Item level serialization via Dynamark protocol capabilities mean the printer is 21CFR Part 11 compliant, offers an audit trail with comprehensive user administration, and validation documentation is available.
Another feature on the Domino Gx350i is Domino’s QuickStep 3 user interface. Iberlinares engineers find this helpful as it allows for user-friendly message editing and printer operation. A single label can be used for various print positions and only needs to be configured once and sent to all the printheads.
The Domino Gx350i meets all of Iberlinares’ requirements and more for its meat production facility.
Personal Care
Proctor and Gamble (P&G) is one of the world’s largest suppliers of consumer and personal care products. Its goal is to be a leader in inclusive package design, with its products and services used and enjoyed by everyone. This includes those with visual impairments. P&G internal reporting estimates that ten percent of all adults in the U.S. have a visual impairment. In relation to personal care products, it may be challenging for those with visual impairments to identify various products like shampoo or conditioners while in the bath, since sight aids like glasses, contact lenses, and magnifiers are not in use.
“Most shampoo and conditioner bottles are designed to look and feel the same,” says Sumaira Latif, special consultant for inclusive design, P&G. “We realized that we have a huge opportunity to improve the lives of those with a visual impairment by changing our products and packaging, and encouraging other businesses to do the same.”
With her colleagues at P&G, Latif came up with the idea of including tactile notches on the bottles to enable them to be easily differentiated by touch. P&G set out to experiment with a new tactile-coded design for the Herbal Essences bio:renew line of shampoos and conditioners.
“We want to help the world see with their hands,” explains Latif. “A simple differentiator doesn’t just help people with low or no vision, it also helps people who don’t have English as a first language, or those who normally wear corrective glasses or contact lenses—you would be surprised by the number of able-bodied, sighted people who admit to me that they mix up shampoo and conditioner in the shower.”
To keep costs down and minimize impact on production, the goal was to use a solution that placed these tactile markers onto existing bottles instead of creating brand new bottles. Using a laser coder to etch the markers during production seemed like an optimal solution, however the team knew there would be complexities involved in marking the bottles without compromising the packaging or significantly impacting production time.
“While the objective is clearly worthy, we recognized that to be successful, the new approach must not impact productivity. We process hundreds of bottles a minute on each bottling line; changing a manufacturing process is complicated when you’re dealing with those kinds of quantities,” says Latif.
“We needed a solution that could fit into our existing production lines without making a significant impact to speed.”
The P&G team turned to Domino after consulting with several different marking and coding suppliers.
What stood out was Domino’s willingness to work with the manufacturer and collaborate during the testing phase. The final design involves a row of raised lines on the bottom of the back of the shampoo bottles with two rows of raised dots in the same place on conditioner bottles.
“It features a row of raised lines on the bottom of the back of the shampoo bottles—S for shampoo, S for stripes—with two rows of raised dots in the same place on conditioner bottles—C for conditioner, C for circles,” explains Dr. Stefan Stadler, team lead, Domino Laser Academy.
The key to the project’s success was in ensuring that the laser did not puncture the bottles or weaken the barrier strength of the substrate. The Domino laser team identified the bottom of the bottle, where the plastic is at its thickest, as the best location for the tactile labeling, where it would be easily identifiable without compromising the integrity of the packaging.
To ensure the new approach would work for consumers, P&G presented the newly coded Herbal Essences bio:renew bottles to the Royal National Institute of Blind People in the U.K. for consumer testing. A follow-up focus group with visually impaired consumers overwhelmingly approved of the new inclusive bottle design.
Following successful consumer feedback, P&G began using Domino’s D-Series CO2 Industrial Laser solution to mark Herbal Essences bio:renew shampoo and conditioner bottles at various manufacturing plants in the U.S. and at selected contract packers.
Domino’s D-Series i-Tech range of ten-, 30-, and 60-watt CO2 laser marking systems deliver flexible, high-speed, high-quality coding across a variety of materials, with the ability to produce multiple lines of text, making for an ideal industrial-level CO2 laser printing solution.
Based on the initial trial, P&G rolled out the new, inclusive design across all of its U.S. range of Herbal Essences bio:renew shampoos and conditioners.
Marked as Success
Both Iberlinares and P&G found success when it turned to Domino’s marking and coding portfolio. For the meat producer, thermal inkjet technology provided a clean, fast method to mark its PE films. The personal care supplier chose laser marking in a crusade to make shampoo and conditioner bottles more inclusive. Two very different businesses relying on two different technologies, but both with a similar goal. Implement a marking and coding solution that would not significantly impact their production lines. IPM
Feb2022, Industrial Print Magazine