TPi July 2009

57 / 68

July 2009 Tube Products International 55
RFID users face obstacles to find a tag that is simultaneously
well-performing, easily installable and cost-effective. Due to
the traditional problem of RFID labels’ inability to function
on metal surfaces, there have been challenges in those
applications where on-metal hard tags cannot be used. With
up to 10m (32ft) read range on metal surfaces, UHF Class 1
Generation 2 compliant Confidex SteelWING was designed
to overcome the challenges of metal asset tagging. The key
design targets were high performance, compact structure
and cost-efficiency. The lightweight tag has an adhesive
background and can be directly attached to a metal surface
without any extra spacer material.
The drawback of label solutions where the RFID label is lifted
away from the metal surface is that when the antenna bends
closer to metal and the distance to metal reduces, the RFID
label performance decreases significantly. Instead of avoiding
metal contact, contact between the metal and the antenna of
SteelWING actually improves the operational performance.
Wide-band Confidex SteelWING is equipped with NXP
G2XM IC which has extended user memory, and Confidex
can deliver the SteelWINGs with pre-encoding or customer
specific data labels showing visually the encoded data
in barcode or human readable form. SteelWING is often
selected when the use of hard tags is not justifiable due to
cost, and when there is no need for ultimate mechanical
protection for the tag. The product therefore fills the gap in
the market caused by the lack of suitable high-performance
RFID labels for metal surfaces.
Confidex – Finland
On/off magnetic
tube and pipe lifter
The new Magnetic Tube Lifter from Industrial Magnetics, Inc
is designed to assist in stacking, destacking, loading and
unloading for a variety of steel tube and pipe applications.
The Magnetic Tube Lifter incorporates several powerful, rare
earth permanent magnets, which can move many round,
square or custom shaped tubes at once, reducing cycle
times in tube handling applications.
The design of the magnetic circuit prevents tubes from
rolling or shifting during transport. In addition, the Magnetic
Tube Lifter positively holds the load during transfer and only
requires a short burst of shop air to release. This failsafe
design requires no electricity or battery backup, and prevents
the load from being dropped during a power outage or
system air loss, ensuring safer working conditions.
The Tube Lifter is suitable for destacking nested tubing,
hydroforming, roll forming, packing, cutting or tube and pipe
fabrication applications.
Industrial Magnetics, Inc – USA