Datamax
Datamax-O’Neil designs and manufactures stationary and portable label, receipt and barcode printing solution products and printers. These printing solutions enable manufacturing and supply markets to capture the benefits of automated product identification and automated legal and financial transactions. The company’s products address a wide variety of applications, including those in the industrial, healthcare, retail, automotive and ticketing market sectors. Datamax-O’Neil is also provides labels, receipts, tags and thermal transfer ribbons for the most basic to demanding applications. The company provides full service label converting and specializes in complete color pre-printing services for all custom products including art, design and production.[1]
The company was founded in 1977 as Datamax, however, in 2005, Datamax was acquired by the Dover Corporation who own a number of technology based companies within the Auto-ID industry. Dover acquired O'Neil Product Development in 2006. Datamax and O'Neil merged into one company in 2009, becoming Datamax-O'Neil.[2] Today, headquartered in Orlando, Florida, USA the company is part of Dover Corporation's Product Identification Segment.[3]
The printers made by Datamax-O'Neil are either thermal printers or thermal transfer label printers, these printers are mostly used for the production of barcode labels for products and packaging, within manufacturing plants and warehouse and logistics operations. Examples of these barcode labels are most likely to be on the outside of boxes and cartons, or attached to parcels delivered by carriers such as Fed Ex or UPS.
Applications
For manufacturing and warehousing… Datamax-O’Neil offers an array of printers and supplies that provide bar code and RFID labeling for accurate transport and on-time deliveries, and provides end-to-end identification solutions to track materials through manufacturing facilities and the entire supply chain.
For field service… Datamax-O'Neil offers a selection of portable printers that print on-demand documents such as delivery and payment receipts, schematics, service instructions, inspection reports, asset tags, inventory availability, item labels and other critical information.
For healthcare… Datamax-O’Neil is a supplier of printers and print media. Printers are used in more than 2,000 healthcare facilities worldwide and are used in pharmaceutical, laboratory, patient identification and medical records management applications.
For retail… On the floor, Datamax-O’Neil printers offer in-line queue busting in addition to printing pull tags, hand tags, shelf tags and markdown labels. In the back office and warehouse, the company’s solutions help speed the movement of goods to and from the retail floor.
For route accounting… Datamax-O’Neil rugged mobile printers are suited for direct store delivery applications as well as freight management identification, asset trailer tracking, inventory-level data, payment receipts, credit card transactions, signature proofs and end-of-day summary reports.[4]
Datamax-O'Neil makes a range of printers all based on the same technologies. Although basically of the same type the printers are grouped into classes which indicate the environment in which they are to be used.
- office or desktop
- healthcare, education or light industrial
- heavy industrial, manufacturing or shipping.
Standardisation of use has caused these printers to be manufactured in three widths, 4 inches, 6 inches and 8 inches wide. These widths are based on the most common label sizes used in product and shipping labels, although any label size, less than the maximum width, can be printed on each printer. i.e. a 3 inch label can be printed on a 4 inch printer, or two x 3 inch labels can be printed, side by side on a 6 inch printer, or a 7 inch label on an 8 inch printer. This allows for a very wide range of label to be produced from the basic 3 widths of printer. However the 4 inch wide printers are by far the most common size used worldwide, across all manufacturers of thermal printers
The versatility of the printing process also allows the whole image to be rotated, so that the label can be printed sideways or upside down (upside down labels are most commonly needed if they are to be used with an automatic label applicator). However barcodes printed sideways, sometimes referred to a "ladder" barcodes, are normally not printed as accurately, due to the way the print mechanism works.
References
