BARCODE LABELS Duplication and replication of products in the market has increased to great extent. This results in the decline of the original product sales and the duplicate product sales increases due to its low price and the product loses its goodwill due to its poor quality. Companies tend to face major losses due these counterfeit attacks. Barcode labels are used to protect these products from duplication. It is an optical machine-readable representation of hidden data which is decoded through a barcode scanner. The barcode labels are represented by parallel lines which are placed at varying widths. Earlier these barcodes used to be 1D but nowadays even 2D and 3D are also available. HOW TO APPLY: Firstly, clean the label properly with isopropyl alcohol or any other industrial cleaning solution to remove the unwanted impurities and keep the labels from sticking properly. Now once the surface is clean apply the label carefully. Avoid touching the surface when the protective liner is removed and use a roller to remove any sort of air bubbles if they exist. You only have one chance to apply the labels correctly because if you remove it and put it again then there will be evidence of tampering and your label will be wasted. TYPES OF BARCODE LABELS: 1.PostNET: It is used by the united states postal service. It is used in zip codes that include 5 digit zip codes. This falls under the category of linear barcodes. 2. PDF417: These are used on driving license to encode driving records, name, addresses and photographs. It can also encode fingerprints and signatures. It is a 2D barcode and can store large amounts of data. 3. INTERLEAVED 2 AND 5 BARCODE: It identifies the manufacturers information as it scans the film inserted in the machine. 4. CODE39: It is a linear barcode used for inventory tracking and other coding purposes. It is an alphanumeric code which contains letters from A to Z and numbers from 0 to 9. 5. UPC (Universal Product Code): It is one of the most seen barcodes as they are used in the food industry. You can find these
barcodes in the retail stores while purchasing items. It uses numbers only with a fixed length of 12 digits. 6. DATA MATRIX CODE: These barcodes can be read by cellular devices and are 2D. It arranges black and white modules in rectangles or squares. BARCODE SCANNERS: One of the earliest scanners were built by a single photo sensor that was scrubbed manually to extract the information. The contemporary scanners are of 3 categories namely, RS232 barcode scanner, hologram manufacturers, keyboard interface scanners and USB scanners. Of these 3, Keyboard Interface Scanners are the best to use. They are connected to a computer using a PS/2 or AT keyboard and the data sent appear as if it had been typed directly from the keyboard. Barcode labels and holographic stickers have now become an intrinsic part of human existence, so if you want to keep your inventory items well organized then barcode labels is the best option to choose.