Teague Willadsen

Manufacturers of gadgets, at home audio equipment to automotive keyless entry devices, are increasingly seeking a reliable, affordable way of uniquely identifying and following items through the manufacturing cycle, income distribution and after-sale guarantee verification. An independent, automatic tracking system requires that a permanent, machine-readable code be reproduced to an internal printed circuit board to uniquely identify each product. The rule must store data in the tiny space available on real-estate conscious printed circuit boards, must not influence circuit performance, and must be tough enough to survive production operations including wave solder and board washing.

The 2-d matrix rule offers a means to store alpha-numeric character strings in really small aspects of the printed circuit board. Laser marking technology offers a way of completely applying 2D matrix requirements to many board substrates. The high-accuracy and high-resolution of beam-steered laser marking systems provides the means to produce well-defined, large stability codes no matter code size. Laser marking also provides the individual with a computer-controlled marking process for easy setup into automated item tracking systems.

ECC 200 2D Matrix Codes

Two-dimensional symbologies encode data in the type of a checkerboard pattern of on/off cells. Certain benefits of Data Matrix limitations over traditional 1D barcodes include:

Encode data digitally, in the place of the analog selection of information in traditional barcodes.

Can provide low-contrast printing on components without requiring a name

Provide very high information density - the best among other typical 2-d limitations, which means that you are able to place a great deal of information in a very small area.

They're scaleable, meaning that it is possible to print them and study them in several degrees of magnification - only tied to the decision of the available printing and imaging techniques.

Due to the high information density inherent to Data Matrix limitations, they also provide integral error-correction methods which allow fully recovering the information encoded in a Data Matrix symbol even though the level is broken and missing up to 2011-12 of the symbol.

They're read by camcorders rather than a scanned laser beam used for studying traditional barcodes, meaning that they could be read in any direction.