Allen Coding supplies coding equipment to Lanes Health

When Lanes Health, a UK producer of alternative medicines, needed to replace out-dated coding equipment, Allen Coding Systems recommended its 53Lti thermal transfer coders for the job.

The Gloucester-based manufacturer of nutraceutical and medicinal products has been a customer of Allen Coding for more than seven years and replaced all five of its coders with 53Lti units to print variable batch and expiry data onto 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.

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

Matthew Spreckley, service manager at Allen Coding explained: ‘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 continued: ‘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.’

The 53Lti offers 300dpi print resolution, cassette ribbon loading, 600m ribbon capacity, 53mm x 30mm print area with print speeds up to 250mm per second, and a high-quality thermal printhead.

Other features of the 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.