Reading Technology

Over the past three decades reading requirements to ‘drive’ mailing systems has evolved and advanced to keep pace with customer demands and advances in data handling and printing technologies.

For example, early reading systems simply used one dark bar to indicate a change in customer group.  Whereas today’s requirements range from serial OMR marks to high density two dimensional code reading at very high speeds.

Examples of reading used:

Serial and / or Parallel OMR marks

The most common reading type used in the UK.  All OMR reading heads installed on Kern equipment use the Kern developed reading head.  These heads utilise infra red light eliminating the effects of variations in ambient light.

Bar-code (1D)

Kern have integrated ‘off the shelf’ bar-code scanners from Sick, Data –Logic etc. (why re-invent the wheel!)

Data Matrix (2D)

Several types of 2D readers are deployed depending on the applications.  For example, if a customer only needs to process 2D reading on mid range mailing systems, then a less complex unit is required.  Whereas to process OMR, 1D & 2D applications on a high speed line, requires a faster unit with ‘vision’ capability.

OMR + 1D + 2D + OCR

Some customers have ‘legacy’ OMR applications as well as Bar-code,  Data-Matrix and OCR applications.  Kern found that in some cases a camera based technology provided the most cost effective and flexible solution.

The range of reading devices available, combined with the flexibility of Kern’s software, enables almost all types of codes and reading logics to be read.

Within the Technical Support Team are specialists who have many years of experience and can quickly find solutions to customer’s reading requirements.  On occasions, the team have been challenged to provide diverse reading solutions for example, codes printed with invisible ink or reading magnetic ink (MICR).