Print Quality Assessment System

At the beginning of last year, we had the pleasure of receiving a project brief from one of our long-standing clients, who trusted us to develop a unique solution according to their exact requirements.

The client’s brief was to add industrial scanners to their existing printers, allowing them to assess the quality of the printed 2D Data Matrix barcode. The end client’s requirements were that if a barcode quality was below “Grade C”, the barcode had to be destroyed. If two consecutive barcodes were of poor quality, the printer had to stop and signal an error.

During the development process, we encountered various challenges, which were successfully resolved by our R&D department — something we can only be proud of.

The final product we developed was a TSC MH641T barcode printer + M220 DPM. Our system works together with the client’s traceability system and reports directly into it. When the barcode is printed, the industrial scanner sends information to the traceability system. If the barcode is correct, the operator takes the label and applies it to the product. If the print is defective, the traceability system sends a command to the printer, and the printer destroys the label. In this way, we have full control over the printed labels, and the operator always applies a label with a verified barcode to the product. All information is recorded in the traceability system, giving us full process traceability.

The final result of our development is full control over the printing of 2D Data Matrix barcodes, optimization of the traceability system, and a reduction in additional costs during the production of the final product.