Industrial + Specialty Printing

New tag types and packaging technologies are getting a start in aviation and expanding into new areas.

By Bob Hamlin

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags have been a mainstay in supply-chain management for many years and are starting to show up in some unlikely places. High-memory tags are now used in aircraft parts to store 20- to 30-year maintenance histories directly on the parts. This aerospace application requires that the tag be inflammable and withstand wide temperature ranges, shock, and vibration. This is just one area where industrial printing could ultimately be applied in conjunction with RFID technology to improve costs and efficiencies.

Paper documents are another area ripe for RFID applications. Despite the move to a digital world, many areas still rely on the printed word. An opportunity is looming for industrial printers to combine document printing with RFID-tagging technologies to create new uses and benefits. These could range from storing entire document copies on a printed tag, including photographs and related work, to cryptography information for document authentication.

In January of 2010, Airbus announced it would begin requiring its suppliers to deliver aircraft parts with RFID tags already attached and encoded. This announcement was significant for two important reasons. The first is that this represents the first time an airframe manufacturer plans to use tags on flying aircraft and, as such, those tags will have to meet stringent requirements for harsh environments and long life. The second is that Airbus is requiring the use of high-memory tags, starting with 4-KB tags and moving quickly to 8 KB.

The demand for additional memory in RFID tags has grown for many years. The challenge for high-memory-tag designers is to create a passive UHF tag. A passive tag takes its power only from the RF energy supplied over-the-air by the tag interrogator (also known as a reader). This means that only ultra-low power levels are available to run the tag and its memory. The additional data-storage requirements by aerospace for long life and high temperature resistance are impossible to meet using standard RFID tags that use charge-based flash-memory arrays. However, recent developments present the possibilty of supporting up to 32 KB of non-volatile memory on standard, passive tags, thereby opening up many new applications and opportunities, including those where printing is the viable solution.