Allen Coding Gives Health Check to Lanes' Thermal Transfer Coders

Other features of the innovative, space-saving coder is its suitability for marking labels and other packaging substrate with RSS barcodes; linear and composite barcodes; real time; sell-by dates; batch numbers; company logos; prices and source codes.

Jan 6 2012 --- When Gloucester-based Lanes Health needed to replace out-dated coding equipment, Allen Coding Systems recommended its popular, cost-effective 53Lti thermal transfer coders for the job.

A customer of Allen Coding’s for more than seven years, the manufacturer and packer of neutraceutical and medicinal products replaced all five of its coders with 53Lti units, which are being used to print variable batch and expiry data on to product labels.

The Allen units are installed at the labelling stage on five different lines at Lanes Health, the fastest of which operates at speeds of up to 160 labels per minute.

The customer’s main requirement was to ensure that the print was clear, legible and did not rub off the label, but they also needed the machines to be customised with brushes attached and a heater on the head.

Says Matthew Spreckley, Service Manager at Allen Coding: “Lanes Health uses a resin ribbon, which has a higher peel off temperature requiring more energy to lay down print on the labels. In order to achieve this at the speeds the customer needed, we had to incorporate a pre-heater to increase the ambient temperature around the thermal bar, which resulted in much better print quality.”

He continues: “The brushes were fitted to overcome contamination from the customer’s label reels, which was affecting print quality. The brushes wipe both sides of the label before they pass through the print engine.”

Production Manager at Lanes Health, Mark Horan, says: “I cannot fault the assistance and great customer service given by the Allen Coding team in order to deal with any enquiries that arose after installation.”

He continues: “The 53Lti is easy to use and the training provided by Allen was very useful.”

“Overall the service provided was excellent and I would not hesitate to recommend them to other companies looking for reliable, good value thermal coders and marking equipment”, concludes Mr Horan.

The unit is reliable and robustly engineered, and is also backed by Allen Coding’s round-the-clock customer service and support scheme.

Other features of the innovative, space-saving coder is its suitability for marking labels and other packaging substrate with RSS barcodes; linear and composite barcodes; real time; sell-by dates; batch numbers; company logos; prices and source codes.

The 53LTi is supplied as standard with an operator keypad and Windows-based fullfeatured label design software.

One of Europe’s leading suppliers of thermal transfer, hot foil, ink jet and laser coding and marking equipment, Allen Coding is part of the ITW Coding & Marking Division which also comprises Betaprint, Norwood, Diagraph, Trident and AC Codiergeraete.