Smartrac offers new cost-effective Laundry Tag

RFID tags for the laundry industry’s hostile working environment have been around for a while. While they can increase process efficiency, creating such robust tags means that their unit cost is often quite high — until now. Smartrac’s new Laundry Tag not only sets new performance benchmarks, but offers true high-volume availability with corresponding economies of scale.

Smartrac’s new Laundry Tag is specifically designed to withstand the harsh demands of the laundry industry and similar application areas, such as hotels, hospitals, clothing or costume rental and work clothes supply, as well as commercial laundries.

Laundry Tag can also be used in other industrial applications with demanding technical requirements. Thanks to its sturdy design and robust polyphenylene sulfide (PPS) housing, Laundry Tag withstands water immersion, high temperatures up to 200°C, pressure and chemicals.

While it’s ideally suited to the rough environmental conditions found in the laundry management industry, this thin HF tag (Ø 16.1mm / 0.63”) nonetheless supports enhanced garment classification, and can contribute to efficient water and energy usage.

Best-in-class performance
Laundry Tag offers high read performance compared to other HF laundry transponders that use the same technology.

Equipped with an anti-collision feature, individual tags can be read even when many tagged garments are stacked together tightly. Its small form factor offers excellent performance and superior read distances within the HF frequency band. Manufactured in a natural beige color, it can be easily and invisibly sewn into linen sheets, garments and other laundry items.

A low-cost, robust solution for high-volume applications
Laundry Tag has been developed for applications that use systems which only utilize the UID memory of an RFID tag. The use of the UID memory on a tag guarantees a robust and simple process without the need to code tags during the business process. This also guarantees also the lowest possible cost of ownership.

Despite its low cost, Laundry Tag’s size and performance meet industry requirements to speed up inventory processes for hotels, hospitals and other institutions, and its format allows standard UID and calendar week printing on the tag’s surface.

Small in size, big in performance
Laundry Tag complies with all relevant industry standards (ISO 18000-3, ISO 15693) and has passed a wide range of strict quality tests for temperature, humidity and pressure resistance, making it a reliable inventory tracking solution for harsh environments.

Tests carried out on production versions of the tag have yielded 100% pass rates in response to temperatures of up to +200°C and down to -30°C; 500 hours of 85% relative humidity; pressure cooking at +121°C and 2 bars of pressure; radial compression of 1200N and axial compression of 2600N; and demanding thermal cycling and transport tests, among others.

Backed by 100% yield delivery from Smartrac’s production facilities, high stock levels guarantee short lead times. Delivering market-leading performance from an RFID tag designed for hot and wet environments, and at a very attractive price point for volume orders, Laundry Tag offers possibly the best price/performance ratio available from any similar tag on the market today.