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The RF Lite Range – The Triple Threat of Off-line Coding

7th August 2023 | 3 mins

Kirsty Burrage

New from Rotech, a low-cost coding system for printing date and batch codes onto pouches and resealable bags. The RF Lite – Pouch Edition – has been designed to reliably print small amounts of variable information onto flat form pouches at an impressive throughput rate of 30-50 products per minute.

Assisting with coding automation since 2016

The ever-popular RF Lite has been helping companies to automate their date coding process since 2016. The compact coding system, first launched at Foodex is still unrivalled in the industry in terms of performance and cost, and is still as relevant in the industry today, with many manufacturers still struggling with labour intensive, manual coding processes.

The original system, which uses friction rollers to guide the flat packaging under the printer, is perfect for feeding food sleeves and uniform cartons but has it’s limitations when it comes to running cartons below a certain size. This lead to the development of the RF Lite – Shuttle Edition – in 2020. The shuttle variant uses a reciprocating plate to feed each carton with no limit on size in the direction of feed. This allows for easy handling of the small carton packs, commonly used in the vape and cosmetic industries.

Food sleeve printed with best before date using thermal inkjet printer

Small vape cartons printed with barcode and batch using thermal inkjet printer

Food pouches printed with best before dates using thermal inkjet technology

Batch number and best before date printed onto CBD cartons

Three is the magic number

Fast forward to 2023 and the Rotech team are proud to announce that the third model in the RF Lite Range is here, as a solution for the handling and printing of bags and pouches. The system uses innovative vacuum technology to ‘pluck’ an individual product from the stack before it is put past the printer for the date or batch code to be applied.

As with the original model, the RF Lite Pouch is fitted with a maintenance-free thermal inkjet printer, capable of producing excellent quality prints (up to 600dpi) in a variety of different formats. The printer cartridges are long-lasting too – one cartridge can produce up to 400,000 high quality prints before it needs replacing, which takes just seconds.

Flexible solution for coding flat-form packaging

Although the systems use different feeding methods, they have all been created with the same initial goal in mind; to help producers move away from coding and labelling their packaging by hand – a slow process that can often result in miscoded packs which have to be thrown away.

Not only are they perfect for the above, helping many of our customers to reduce labour costs, waste and maximise productivity, the innovative RF Lite is ideal for helping to meet spikes in seasonal demand and run trial products as they do not impact on other production lines.

When it comes to cost-effective coding systems, three really is the magic number.

For any information on the RF Lite range, or any of our feeding systems or printers, please contact us. One of our friendly experts will always be happy to help and answer any queries you may have.

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