Issue
In several occasions, old ink or wrong ink has been introduced into the inkjet fluid system with catastrophic outcomes as for example total yelling of tubes and assemblies, or simply reduced lifetime of heads, wrong waveforms for the ink, etc.
Hence, we have decided to add an RFID tag to each ink bottle with the following information:
- Ink type
- Waveform
- Expiration date
With that information read with an RFID antenna placed in the ink cabinet, the controller will automatically check whether the ink type is compatible with head, the right waveform is automatically loaded, and the expiration date of the ink is OK.
Procedure
We intend to put an adhesive RFID tag either at the concave bottom of the 1 Liter ink bottle or in the label. We are contemplating a UHF Gen2 tag (US frequency 902-928 MHz)which we can program in-house and tag it to the bottle as it comes in. A UHF label costs around $.25 while a mifare costs $1.
We will place an RFID antenna in the ink cabinet that we will connect to the PC that comes with every eZinkjet. The distance Antenna to bottle will not be more than ½ meter.