The RFID Technology in the Field of Printing

In the field of packaging and anti-counterfeiting, traditional bar code labels are widely used, but with people's higher and more complete information demands in many aspects such as product production, storage and transportation, quality assurance, anti-counterfeiting, management, etc., this kind of bar code label is obviously not enough, not only can it not provide information on product production, management, etc., but also can it not warn the temperature and other information required for product quality assurance, and in terms of anti-counterfeiting effect, it also gradually loses its anti-counterfeiting effect due to its single printing and easy counterfeiting. With the advancement of technology and the application of RFID in the field of label production, a brand-new, multi-functional RFID smart label with good anti-counterfeiting effect has begun to be widely used, which will bring new vitality and vigor to label printing.

The printing industry is an important part of the cultural industry as well as a significant sector of the national economy. With the development of our country's national economy and the continuous improvement of people's living standards, the demand for printing products in various industries has rapidly expanded, and the printing industry has become a new economic growth point in our country. However, along with the development of the market economy, the current printing industry has higher and higher requirements for printing quality, while profits are getting thinner and thinner. Insufficient supply of goods, the continuous decline of prices, the substantial increase of varieties, the general decline of the number of prints, the shorter and shorter cycles as well as the difficulty of loan recovery, all of which make the business operators feel unprecedented pressure. As the traditional industry, printing must seek space for cost savings and greater profitability from informationization. The printing industry in the past two years, it has transformed from traditional printing to modern electronic printing, from manual typesetting to computer typesetting, and has gone through the process from traditional manual to modern technology, there must be a leap in management requirements, which is the inevitable process that the informatization has been popularized in the printing.

The main features of RFID

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) is a radio frequency identification system, also known as wireless IC tags, electronic tags, inductive electronic chips, inductive cards, non-contact cards, etc, which is a technology that uses radio waves to achieve non-contact data access, it can be combined with data access technology through wireless communication to link the database system behind it to form a huge and concatenated system. A complete RFID system includes readers, sensors or chips, antennas, software and hardware systems, etc, the basic principle is that when the label enters the magnetic field area, the receiving reader sends a signal, and the energy obtained by the induced current sends out the product information stored in the chip, or actively sends a signal of a certain frequency, then after the information is read and decoded by the reader, it is sent to the central information system for relevant processing.

The RFID label can be divided into passive label: instead of sending out data waves on its own, the waves is sent out by reader to generate signals. The antenna of the RFID label receives the induced current generated by the magnetic field, and then sends the information stored in the chip to the reader to receive interpretation. While the active label: in addition to the chip and antenna, the label has an additional power source, which can continuously send out data signals actively for the reader to receive and interpret. To sum up, RFID mainly has the following characteristics.

• Data reading and writing function: RFID can be used to directly read the information into the database without contact, and can process multiple labels at a time, also,the status of logistics processing can also be written into the tag for reading and judgment in the next stage of logistics processing.

• Easy to miniaturize and diversified shapes: RFID is not limited by size and shape in reading, and there is no need to match the fixed size and printing quality of paper for reading accuracy. In addition, RFID can be further miniaturized and diversified to be used in different products.

• Environmental resistance: The paper will be invisible once it is soiled, but RFID has strong resistance to water, oil, drugs and other substances. RFID can also read data in a dark or dirty environment.

• Reusable: Since RFID is electronic data, it can be overwritten repeatedly, so the label can be recycled and reused. For example, passive RFID can be used without a battery, and there is no need for maintenance.

• Penetrability: RFID can also communicate if it is covered with non-metallic or non-transparent materials such as paper, wood, and plastic. However, if it is iron metal, communication is not possible.

• Large data memory capacity: Data capacity will be expanded with the development of memory specifications, the amount of data that objects need to carry will become larger and larger in the future, and the demand for the expandable capacity of the label will also increase, and RFID will not be restricted.

The main application of RFID in the printing field

In fact, RFID technology has been researched and applied as early as World War II, at that time, the United Kingdom used RFID to confirm whether the aircraft entering the airport was its own aircraft to avoid accidental attacks. RFID is equivalent to a kind of label that can read the data without touching it, so it has a very wide range of applications. For example, access control (personnel access control monitoring, control, and commuting personnel management); asset collection and waste management (pallet, container, trolley, cage cart and other recyclable containers management; garbage recycling and handling, waste management and control systems, etc.); cargo management and warehousing material handling (baggage identification for air transportation, inventory, logistics and transportation management, warehouse inventory, material control system); transportation (toll system for expressways); anti-theft applications (anti-theft in supermarkets, anti-theft management in libraries or bookstores); animal monitoring (livestock management, pet identification, wild animal ecology tracking); automatic control (assembly and production of automobiles, home appliances, and electronics); joint ticket (a multi-purpose intelligent stored-value card, bonus point card) and many other aspects.

In the printing field, RFID has gradually replaced traditional barcode labels, experts predict that RFID technology can have an important impact on packaging, anti-counterfeiting printing and paper in the next few years. For the printing field, in the production of RFID, printing technology can be used to produce RFID antennas, as well as the part of the printed chip in the research and development, which brings new development opportunities to the printing industry. There are more and more applications of RFID in logistics and management. In foreign countries, Wal-Mart, the largest retailer in the United States, decided to start requesting the top 100 upstream suppliers in January 2005 to add RFID to their warehouses where they supply goods, and fully use RFID at the end of 2006. In China, the applications of RFID, such as animal identification chips implanted in pets and animals, easy cards (smart cards) used by MRT, non-contact access cards used by many companies, etc, all can see the actual application of RFID in life, so it can be understood that the demand and application field of RFID are getting bigger and bigger.