FineLine Technologies announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company a new patent focused on the tracking and tracing of rubber products pre- and post-curing. FineLine RFID pre-cure and post-cure labels are the result of the company’s ongoing investment in R&D, and part of a growing patent portfolio, including but not limited to this patent, they note.
Using FineLine’s tire-tagging expertise and decades of manufacturing experience, tire manufacturers can quickly upgrade their tire-identification technology to RFID while maintaining backwards compatibility with established design and manufacturing processes, the company claims.
George Hoffman, CEO of FineLine Technologies, said, “The tire industry is moving to Industry 4.0/ digital factory using RFID tags and labels in manufacturing processes. Our patented products enable an enormous amount of critical data to be accessed quickly and easily. The total applied cost of our RFID bead label is a fraction of the cost of spring tags and other similar RFID solutions on the market.”
FineLine patented RFID bead labels have been implemented at a major global off the road (OTR) tire manufacturer for more than four years powering Industry 4.0 across their manufacturing, per FineLine. The RFID capabilities of the rugged OTR label enable use cases such as traceability back to building machines, material flows, weighing of green tires, curing, identification of the individual tires during X-ray and quality processes, warehousing, warranty and claim handling, and other new use cases. The barcode printed on the label continues to support existing use cases and infrastructure not yet upgraded to RFID technology. Step by step, this global tire manufacturer easily implemented RFID creating new value, they add.
“Tire manufacturers will increasingly use RFID bead labels to move into Industry 4.0 business cases, such as ‘tires-as-a service’ or ‘pay-per-mile.,'“ said Hoffman.
