Date printer / Date coder

Product labelling with date printer by hand or automated

A date printer is essential for certain productions. Legal regulations, but also of course the customer's expectations, require that the best-before date, the production date or even the shipping date be affixed to products or their packaging. Traditional solutions - for example with labels - are not only time-consuming and expensive, but also difficult to reconcile with the ever-advancing digitalisation. They are also not very flexible and, in the worst case, can lead to the actual production having to be interrupted.

An efficient date printer (date coder must therefore either be easy to integrate into existing productions or be easy to operate manually for small production volumes. For the latter case, portable hand printers with TIJ technology (Thermal Inkjet) from Hewlett Packard are particularly well suited. Thanks to the combined printing units (print head and ink cartridge in one housing), hand-held printers can be built very compactly and lightly today. As a rule, one does not construct stand-alone date printers here, but printers with general functions. Common hand printers can print not only dates, but also normal text, barcodes, QR codes, sequential numbers (serial numbers,...) or simple graphics. The different print formats can also be combined so that all the required print data can be applied to the object in one printing process. Due to their light weight and low power consumption, modern hand printers are also suitable for longer shifts.

In practice, non-portable date printers are either stand-alone machines that can be integrated into production sequences in a modular fashion, or flexibly positionable components consisting of a printing and control unit that can be mounted on predefined assembly lines. The systems can also control several print heads so that they can be used as date printers in parallel or products can be printed from several sides at the same time.

Inkjet-pistols as date printer and date coder

Mobile hand printers are very well suited as date printers for small to medium-sized batches. They work according to the inkjet principle and thus allow labelling even in places that are difficult to access. An inkjet gun is moved directly along the object to be printed, thereby printing (manual, automatic, sensor-controlled). Since the print head does not touch the material itself, practically all types of surfaces can be printed. Of course, there are special inks for different applications.

Date printer with fixed print units

Permanently installable devices, such as our NasaJet® NJ-2000, are easily suitable for subsequent integration into existing productions. They also allow simultaneous printing from different positions. This often eliminates the need to rotate or position the printed objects in advance. A typical application is, for example, the use as a date printer in the production of eggs.

Here, too, the proven TIJ technology is responsible for ensuring that economic efficiency is always at the forefront.