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William Frick & Co.'s Gen 2 UHF Tags Take the Heat for Manufacturing Apps
According to Poplawski, William Frick & Co.'s customers have highly specific requirements for the MS-HE16 tags—in the case of injection molds, for instance, a groove is machined into each mold in order to accommodate the tag. But in many cases, he says, the firm also manufactures the MS-HE16 tag in a custom form factor, so that it fits seamlessly into the mold, tool or whatever else a client needs to track. In some cases, the tag contains a built-in eyelet so it can be hung onto a tool or other asset. Other form factors provide holes so the tags can be screwed onto an asset. (Poplawski is not at liberty to discuss any customer applications in detail, due to non-disclosure agreements signed with those clients.)
William Frick & Co. is not the only firm that sells heat-resistant UHF passive Gen 2 RFID tags. However, the company indicates, the high temperature resistance of its SM-HE16 tags makes them stand out in the field.
To ensure that the RFID inlay will survive high levels of heat, TROI sources RFID chips from various suppliers, such as Impinj and Alien Technology. It then solders the chip to an antenna on a small circuit board, which provides the final tags with their first protection to heat damage. Inlays produced for most applications use a conductive glue to attach these two elements, but sustained high temperatures would melt this glue, making the inlay unusable.
The inlays can be embedded in concrete, rubber, fiberglass or other materials, depending on the needs of a particular end user.
While passive UHF tags are more susceptible to RF interference than those operating at lower frequencies, Poplawski says, the durable housing offsets the inlay from metal or liquid in the tag's vicinity, thereby ensuring adequate read ranges (up to 10 feet of read range in metal-rich environments). What's more, because the UHF Gen 2 protocol allows greater numbers of tags in close proximity to be read more quickly than those operating at lower frequencies, more tags can be read in less time compared with lower-frequency tags.
William Frick & Co. is demonstrating its MS-HE16 tags and other SmartMark tags in Booth 427 at the RFID Journal LIVE! 2009 conference, being held this week in Orlando, Fla.
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William Frick & Co. is not the only firm that sells heat-resistant UHF passive Gen 2 RFID tags. However, the company indicates, the high temperature resistance of its SM-HE16 tags makes them stand out in the field.
To ensure that the RFID inlay will survive high levels of heat, TROI sources RFID chips from various suppliers, such as Impinj and Alien Technology. It then solders the chip to an antenna on a small circuit board, which provides the final tags with their first protection to heat damage. Inlays produced for most applications use a conductive glue to attach these two elements, but sustained high temperatures would melt this glue, making the inlay unusable.
The inlays can be embedded in concrete, rubber, fiberglass or other materials, depending on the needs of a particular end user.
While passive UHF tags are more susceptible to RF interference than those operating at lower frequencies, Poplawski says, the durable housing offsets the inlay from metal or liquid in the tag's vicinity, thereby ensuring adequate read ranges (up to 10 feet of read range in metal-rich environments). What's more, because the UHF Gen 2 protocol allows greater numbers of tags in close proximity to be read more quickly than those operating at lower frequencies, more tags can be read in less time compared with lower-frequency tags.
William Frick & Co. is demonstrating its MS-HE16 tags and other SmartMark tags in Booth 427 at the RFID Journal LIVE! 2009 conference, being held this week in Orlando, Fla.
