When contract packer to the horticultural industry, Focus Pack, changed direction and found itself in need of a printer to produce a large amount of information on its packaging, it called upon Allen Coding Systems (tel: 01438 347 770; www.allencoding.com) to provide new 53XL80 thermal transfer coders to do the job clearly and consistently.
Producers of packaging for Crowne Green premium lawn seed and lawn care products, Lincolnshire-based Focus Packaging and Design Ltd required the printers to reproduce manufactured/sealed dates, batch codes and product ingredients onto PE material at a consistently high quality for all of its product lines.
Spokesperson for Focus Pack, Bobby Stark, says: “Allen Coding is a name that has been associated with high quality marking and coding for a long time so it was a natural decision for us to contact the company when we needed online thermal transfer printers.”
An important requirement of the new printers was the ability to print an extensive amount of information, so the 53XL80 thermal transfer coder, which can print up to 80mm, was selected as the best model available.
Two 53XL80 thermal transfer coders replaced the previously used ink jet printers and were attached to Focus Pack’s vertical form fill sealing machines using bespoke frames that were specially designed for the purpose by Allen Coding engineers.
Comments Bobby: “Installation went smoothly with no hassle. The printer itself is very straight-forward to use and, with the software supplied, creating new print formats is a breeze. We make sure the print area and print head is clean but apart from that we do very little with regard to maintenance on the printers.”
Operating at speeds ranging from 15 bags to 45 bags of grass care product per minute, on an average print area of 53mm x 40mm, the thermal coders have enabled Focus Pack to speed up job set-up and to increase its product output.
Bobby explains: “We find the variable data field very useful when running the same type of job and using different batches of product. The operator can easily enter a new batch number when prompted and selecting an existing format takes just seconds to carry out, which helps speed up production enormously. Also the internal clock means we never have to change the date field.”
He concludes: “From the first discussions we had with Allen Coding everything has gone as planned and as I would have hoped. Engineers came when they said they would and were very helpful when choosing a suitable system.
“I have already recommended Allen Coding to other companies as we are over the moon with them and we are actually looking at purchasing a few more of their printers!”
Allen Coding is part of the ITW Marking & Coding Division, which also comprises Allen Spain, Norwood, Diagraph, Trident and Allen Germany
