Pharmaceutical and Medical Packaging News
Magazine
PMPN Article Index
Originally Published September 1999
CASE HISTORY
Coder Changes over Quickly and Safely
A thermal-transfer coder replaces a hot-foil stamper, eliminating the use of hot blocks.
Boots Contract Manufacturing (Nottingham, England), a division of Boots Pharmaceutical, needed to replace its hot-foil coding system with a faster, more reliable, cost-effective system that could print consistently on a variety of pharmaceutical products. The company, which supplies pharmaceuticals to Boots the Chemist, Boots Healthcare International, and a number of other customers, also wanted the system to produce simple batch identity numbers and use-by dates and to operate at high speeds.
Paul Price, Boots departmental engineer, decided to investigate thermal-transfer coding and began on-site trials with the SmartDate thermal-transfer coder from Markem Corp. (Keene, NH). The SmartDate system can be used to produce numeric codes, bar codes, and graphics.
Price uses the system to code preprinted pressure-sensitive labels and to print directly on sachets. Almost immediately, Price realized the competitive advantages of the system—it could print legibly and consistently, even at variable speeds. Also, its digital-to-print technology increased uptime and productivity and lowered costs by eliminating the changeover time and hand-set type required for hot-stamp systems.
Price found the elimination of hand-set type particularly appealing. "Compared with the hot-foil technology, the SmartDate coder offers advantages in changeover speed and fewer safety risks, particularly with the elimination of the hot blocks. The SmartDate system is also programmable, a benefit not offered by hot-foil systems. When a character block is missing from a hot-foil system, the replacement costs can be high."
Boots also needed a coder that could handle applications with high running speeds. Price found that most of SmartDate's competitors experienced difficulty printing labels at high speeds, while the SmartDate coder easily met Boots's goal of printing 125 labels per minute.
In addition to providing the coders, Markem also helped Boots install the two SmartDate 2i coders on Boots's Hoeller sachet machines. The machines fill cold-relief powder into sachets at a rate of 150 sachets per minute. "Markem was able to program two batch codes to be printed simultaneously with the optimum ribbon efficiency, leading to considerable savings over the previous hot-foil coder system," says Price.
Among SmartDate's other features are its large print area
Additionally, the thermal-transfer coding system can detect and troubleshoot faults, such as a broken ribbon, in order to minimize downtime and to prevent unnecessary waste of labeled but uncoded product.
Markem provides companies worldwide with in-plant printing systems, supplies, and services for marking and decorating a variety of products.
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