Confidex SteelWING sets the benchmark for direct-on-metal labels

Citation

(2009), "Confidex SteelWING sets the benchmark for direct-on-metal labels", Pigment & Resin Technology, Vol. 38 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/prt.2009.12938ead.014

Confidex SteelWING sets the benchmark for direct-on-metal labels

Article Type: New products From: Pigment & Resin Technology, Volume 38, Issue 5

Confidex, a fast growing company with unique expertise in RFID design, manufacturing and engineering, today announced the launch of its latest RFID tag innovation Confidex SteelWING, a passive UHF C1G2 special label that is capable to function directly on metal surfaces with superior performance.

Metallic asset’s tracking, item level tagging, metal RTI’s (returnable transport item) or plastic RTI’s with highly metal content… All of these are very familiar applications where potential RFID users face obstacles to find a tag that is simultaneously well-performing, easily installable and cost-effective. Owing to the traditional problem of RFID labels’ inability to function on metal surface, there have been challenges to go forward in those applications where on-metal hard tags cannot be used, although the benefits of RFID-enabled tracking system would be already clear and short return-of-investment time calculated.

With up to 10 m (32 ft) read range on metal surfaces, UHF Class 1 Generation 2 compliant Confidex SteelWING was designed to overcome the challenges of metal asset tagging. The key design targets; high performance, compact structure and cost-efficiency were achieved with SteelWING’s innovative patent pending design. The light-weight tag has adhesive background and it can be directly attached on metal surface – without any extra spacer material.

Before this, RFID labels could not be directly applied to metal. Many label solutions have been developed with the idea in mind that the RFID label has been lifted away from the proximity of metal surfaces.

Typically such products work the better the more space is left in between tag and metal. But the drawback of such labels is that when antenna bends closer to metal and hence the distance to metal reduces, the RFID label performance decreases significantly. Instead of avoiding metal contact, contact between the metal and the antenna of Confidex SteelWING actually improves the operational performance. Unlike its competitive products, Confidex SteelWING is truly a “metal-friendly” RFID label.

SteelWING can also be attached to other materials and it can be operated still with slightly reduced performance compared to metal surfaces. Wide-band Confidex SteelWING is equipped with NXP G2XM IC which has extended user memory and Confidex can deliver the SteelWINGs with pre-encoding or customer specific data label showing visually the encoded data in barcode or human readable form.

Confidex SteelWING fits for various applications in many industries such as industrial returnable transit item tracking and IT asset management. Most often Confidex SteelWING is selected when the use of hard tags is non-justifiable due to the cost and when there’s no need for ultimate mechanical protection for the tag. Therefore, Confidex SteelWING fills the gap in the market caused by the lack of suitable high-performance RFID labels for metal surfaces and therefore sets a new benchmark for the RFID industry.

“The feedback from our beta customers has been very promising as they needed a SteelWING type of product. This product is another great example of Confidex’s out-of-the box thinking.,” says Hanna Kosunen, Product Line Manager for Hard Tags and Special Labels at Confidex.