Kategoriat: Production

Smartres — Production of High Performance RFID with High Efficiency

Smartres is a well-known Italian RFID tag R&D center and manufacturer. The company has developed its own patented solution to create inlay-less products using technology with chip-on-strap coupled with copper wire antenna. The process provides eco-friendlier products compared to traditional processes, with best in class RF performance. After ten years of experience in manufacturing, utilizing their own designed machinery, Smartres decided to take a step forward. A4IS was commissioned to build a new manufacturing line based on the Smartres process, design, and previously built know-how.

Automation 4 Industrial Solutions (A4IS) is a new company dedicated to the creation of automatic manufacturing lines for various industries and specifically for the RFID world. Smartres have now started to use this new machine called FTL6000 in their own production, where they are producing both HF/NFC and UHF tags.

RFID Tag Variety and Selection

Amongst the various types of tags offered to the market, UHF RFID tags are widely used in various market segments and applications such as Fashion, Logistics, Waste Management, Tires Tracking, and many more. Various antenna form factors and technics, as well as several chips, are used to tailor the best suitable solution for each application.

“For designing the antennas for our tags, the Voyantic Tagformance has been a priceless tool, which has saved us time and given our engineers the chance to get things done efficiently and with high confidence.” says Luigi Radaelli, CEO at Smartres.

“Easy to use and effective in validating the selected antenna profile to get the desired performance, Tagformance is the ideal device for the RFID designer”* confirms Davide Bergamini, Smartres CTO.

How to Provide “100% Performance Tested RFID” Efficiently?

Being able to tailor the best tag for each application purpose is one thing. What becomes at least as an important factor for guaranteeing a faultless RFID system, is that each delivered tag meets the designed performance. The only way to assure this is to verify the performance level of the produced RFID tags by 100%. With a wide banded component like a UHF tag, this cannot be done by checking the tag functionality on one frequency only, but accurately measuring the required wake-up power on multiple frequencies throughout the tag’s frequency band.

The most efficient way of monitoring product quality in a reel to reel manufacturing line is to produce RFID tags and have them tested in the same process. This allows reacting immediately to any changes in the RF performance of the process outcome. Having the testing inline instead of having it offline as a separate testing process, not only avoids large scale rework but also enables one process less. This means less machinery, fewer work hours, and less handling of the reels and having the risk of accidentally damaging the tags. In the end, this all comes down to delivering high-quality tags, with 100% measured and proven RF performance, efficiently.

This Is How to Do It!

As said before, RFID tag quality is mandatory, and the 100% supply of UHF RFID products performing within the specifications tolerances is specifically what the market looks for. To be able to grant this, on top of having the most efficient and reliable tag assembly operations, Smartres and A4IS decided to put in line the measurement of the response curve of the tags by adopting the Voyantic Tagsurance Tester, a state of the art device. With Tagsurance, each UHF RFID tag produced is checked against specifications and validated whether it’s good or not and instead of just marking the failed tags, also the performance level measured is recorded for each tag. These recorded log files give true traceability to the production quality data also afterward.

“Having the Voyantic Tagsurance in our manufacturing for some years already has given us a great advantage for process development and helped us to achieve a world-class high precision production process. We are delivering over 30 million UHF tags yearly with measured quality, yet produced with the best efficiency and minimum labor cost.” says Federico Chiesa , Smartres Operations Manager, going on with: “The in-line adoption of the Tagsurance allows avoiding any additional off-line operations. This minimizes the extent of damage caused by any errors and mistakes like poor raw material quality, process parameters or parts wearing, as any fault can be spotted immediately. It’s a valid support for the machine operator who has the live visibility of the machinery performance, allowing immediate action for any adjustment, resulting in the best possible efficiency. With a highly automated process as ours, part of the efficiency comes from the fact that only one operator is required to run two machines.”

Lab ID – Fast, Reliable and Accurate Testing with Voyantic

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Bologna, Italy, LAB ID is a leading European manufacturer and supplier of RFID inlays and tags. Over the years the company has strengthened their business by increasing production capacity and enriching product portfolio, developing new high quality tags and solutions dedicated to specific market segments, such as fashion/luxury goods. Quality is the firm point of the company policy, and thanks to the Voyantic Tagformance and Tagsurance testing systems, they maintain it always controlled and top level.

According to Marzio Amadori, CTO – Managing Director, the Voyantic equipment is extremely versatile and easy to use.

“We use the Tagsurance to test our UHF tags inline when they reach the final testing phase. This enables us to keep constant control of the quality of each tag assembled. We use it both with dry inlays and final products.”

The Voyantic testing system is extremely fast, reliable, and accurate. But its use is not limited to the production phase only.

“We use the Tagformance for our R&D work when designing a new tag or a new RFID solution. It is extremely helpful. Apart from production, it is also very useful for testing RFID tags in a real operational environment. We are fully satisfied with the service and assistance offered by the Voyantic team; they are always available and ready to address our requests.”, says Marzio Amadori

Michelin — Tire Tags with Consistent Quality

Compagnie Générale des Établissements Michelin is one of the world’s largest tire companies. Michelin manufactures, distributes, and sells tires worldwide. It also offers truck driver assistance services; and fleet tire advice, maintenance, and management services, as well as publishes maps and guides to provide mobility assistance services.

Michelin embeds EPC Class 1 Gen 2 passive ultra-high frequency (UHF) radio frequency identification tags into tire sidewalls during the manufacturing process. This allows, for example, the city’s bus-fleet operators or Michelin’s staff to use RFID to automatically identify each tire at the time that its pressure is being measured and more generally allows a cradle to grave traceability.

The Michelin RFID tag is specifically designed to be integrated into tires. It is typically buried in the tire during the manufacturing process, but can also be integrated into a patch for aftermarket applications. The tag’s read range has been optimized for in-tire use, and the quality assurance based on performance testing is essential to guarantee that each tag has the same properties. After being embedded in a tire, the tag cannot be replaced anymore, should it function poorly.

The Voyantic Tagsurance UHF production tester was the solution meeting the specification for testing the Michelin tire tags. The tags are first tested by the tag vendor HANA Microdisplay Technologies, Inc at their factory with an automated test system. Michelin has the same Tagsurance testing capability to enable sample-based quality control in the form of incoming inspection at their facilities.

“RFID UHF tags for tire applications are significantly over tuned because of tire material properties, and this makes RF performance – i.e., read distance control – more complex to perform “in the air” compared to more common tags. This challenge can be solved from an industrial standpoint if:

  1. the system can properly process each tag test without direct contact;
  2. the test can be done reliably with a large number of other tags in the surroundings;
  3. the production flow itself is improved and accelerated.

All this has been achieved today, thanks to our partner Voyantic, and this will lead Michelin to supply an improved RFID reading capability over volumes for its customers!”,* explains Julien Destraves, Tire RFID expert from Michelin.

 Download a Framework for Applying RFID Tags in Tire Industry › 

Automated Test System for Tire Tag Testing

The Voyantic UHF production testing system consists of the Tagsurance Tester unit and the Snoop Pro coupling element, which enables reliable near field testing for UHF tags. Unlike typical UHF near field antennas, the Snoop Pro coupling element enables characterizing the complete dipole tag structure with excellent correspondence to the far-field behavior.

The Michelin tire factory uses the Voyantic Tagsurance-based Manual Test Station to perform sample-based check and analysis for the incoming tags. At the tag manufacturing plant, the same Voyantic system has been seamlessly integrated by HANA Microdisplay Technologies, Inc. into a precision actuator assembly. It moves a tray of tags on the Snoop Pro antenna, accurately aligning each tag on top of it for testing. With this test system, Hana Microdisplay can 100% guarantee the quality of the tags to their customers.

This is how John Erdmann, the President and CEO of HANA Microdisplay Technologies, Inc. sees the challenges of RFID testing and the role of good equipment in overcoming those challenges:

“Hana Microdisplay produces many types of RFID products and systems. There’s always a challenge in doing accurate and relevant RFID testing quickly and cost-effectively. With the Voyantic system, Hana’s automation engineers were able to integrate a high-level of testing into the process without sacrificing throughput. The data output of the system also allows us to provide more accurate feedback to both our customers and manufacturing lines, to help them design better products and processes. After understanding the capabilities of the Voyantic system during the project with Michelin, Hana Microdisplay chose to implement a Voyantic test system in its most recent roll-to-roll, web-based, high-speed RFID inlay manufacturing line. Hana is also considering retrofitting its older high-speed inlay manufacturing lines to include Voyantic systems.”

The Challenge of High Resonance Frequency

As the UHF tags manufactured by Hana Micro Display to Michelin are embedded in tires, they will be surrounded by rubber and metal mesh structures, which very heavily detune the tags. To compensate for this detuning, the tag is significantly over-tuned to ~2GHz resonance frequency in the air environment.

To lower the tags’ resonance frequency for testing, some modifications were done on the Snoop Pro coupling element. The shielding plate structure on top of the Snoop Pro is intended to shield out the adjacent tags so that only the tag of interest will be tested at a time. In this solution, the shielding plate was custom designed for the Michelin tags. The plate opening incorporates an additional capacitive loading structure. The structure is cut into two parts from the center to prevent direct shorting resulting in two separate capacitive loading strips. The strips are electrically connected along the opening edges. Optimizing this path length lets the Snoop Pro coupling element mimic the tag loading the tire would generate. The tuning effect was adjusted so that the overall bandwidth of all the Michelin tags designed for different tire types fit into the Tagsurance 800-1100MHz operating frequency range.

In the below picture, there are some example frequency responses of different tag designs measured on the Snoop Pro coupling element. The actual resonance frequencies of the tags are around 2GHz, but due to the tuning effect of the plate structure, the resonance frequency has been brought down to 920 – 1020MHz.

In addition to the metal strips, also a magnetic element adjusting was implemented under the plate to pull the ends of the tag towards the Snoop Pro. The purpose of this is to avoid any variation due to tag placement inside the tray. When using near field coupling in measurements, the tag alignment needs to be accurate to avoid variation due to the test setup.

High-Performance UHF Tags with Stable Quality

The performance testing provided by the Tagsurance UHF production tester allows not only checking that the tags are functional, but that their performance is stable and thus quality is controlled. The testing is done on a frequency range of 800-1100MHz, but for high-speed production testing, the number of frequencies on that range can be limited to guarantee the testing will not become the bottleneck of the process.

The above graph shows example data of passed (green) and failed (red) tag responses from production. The accurately measured power threshold data is gathered from the production and can be used to analyze the process capability and to track the level of variation from day-to-day. Accurate variance data enables detecting any drifts immediately, executing corrective actions even before the quality falls out of acceptable levels.

RF testing used to be one of the bottlenecks in the tire tag production process; now, with the Tagsurance, this bottleneck is removed, and the slowest processes are the mechanical ones.