Engineering specifications
The published operating envelope: the material compatibility matrix with its engineering notes, the source selection matrix, symbol grading and the measured speed model with the five variables that move it.
The record architecture
The record already exists. The Control Layer marks its identifier into the part.
Your ERP or MES issued the job, the batch and the serial before the part reached the head. The Light Lane Control Layer reads the PLC tag that identifies that physical part, pulls the identifier from the system that already owns it, composes a fresh mark for that individual part, and steers the galvo mirror pair to draw all of it inside the window the part spends in the field of view. The code is formed in the material rather than printed onto it, graded in line against the scanner class your operation actually carries, and the completion is written straight back against the job. Nothing new is stored anywhere along the way: the record you already keep gains a physical carrier, and a timestamped proof that this part now carries it.
- Reads the system that already owns the identifier, including NetSuite, Infor M3, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, Cin7, Unleashed and Fishbowl, alongside WMS, MES, CMMS and the operational application somebody wrote in-house years ago, through defined connection patterns that each carry a stated authentication model and a stated failure edge
- Composes the mark per part: fixed logo, standards or grade text, the variable date, shift, run and pack fields, and a machine readable code, with Data Matrix generated to ISO/IEC 16022 and graded to ISO/IEC 15415 at the threshold your scanner class supports
- Writes the completion back as an audit record against the job with timestamp, operator, machine and station, carrying the original mark timestamp rather than the write time, over a connection that runs outbound from the station to your endpoint
Three things get bought, and two of them are catalogue items
A plant that wants item-level identity ends up with three things. A laser source, which is catalogue equipment from established manufacturers through their New Zealand channel. A record, which the plant already owns, because the ERP or MES has held the batch and the serial for years. And the layer between them, which is the whole job.
That layer has to know, at the moment a specific part arrives in front of a specific head, what that part is. It has to turn that into a mark, and a mark is not a string, it is a layout: the logo, the fixed text, the standards or grade text, the variable fields that came from your system, and the machine readable code, all sized and positioned for that part and that surface. It has to drive a galvo mirror pair to draw the whole layout while the part is still moving. Then it has to write the completion back against the job, with timestamp, operator, machine and station, so the record closes. Three systems have to agree inside milliseconds: the control system that knows what the part is, the business system that knows what it should say, and the optics that have to finish drawing before the part leaves the field of view.
It stayed open for structural reasons that sit in the two industries either side of it, and the connection patterns, their authentication models and their failure edges are published in full. What matters on this page is what the gap does to a record. An identifier that reaches the part through a person at a keyboard, or through a parts table a marking vendor stood up alongside your ERP, makes the physical item evidence of something other than what your system holds, and an auditor is entitled to notice the difference. Light Lane engineered the layer that closes that, and marking control stands to laser sources exactly as motion control stands to motors: the hardware underneath is bought, the intelligence above it is engineered, and the value moves upward.
One of our own numbers, because a page like this carries them. The record sets the mark content, so how many fields the identifier carries is a line speed decision as much as a data one. A full height dense brand, around 40 mm high and up to roughly 600 mm long, tops out around 75 to 85 m/min on one head, because the ceiling is how much stroke length one scanning mirror pair can draw in the time the part spends in its field of view, so above that the specification is a second head sharing the mark on the same encoder. Five variables move that ceiling: mark height, character density, total mark length, line speed and available power. Beam time is path length, not area. Published figures are typical envelopes from our own testing, and the binding number is the one written into the acceptance criteria after the capability study on your own material.
From the record to the part and back, on every individual part
This loop runs on every part that passes the head. It starts in the system that already owns the identifier and it ends there. Nothing in the middle becomes a new place where data has to be kept, and nothing is pre-rendered or stored twice.
- Step 1
Your system issues the identifier
The decision is made before the Control Layer is involved. The PLC running the line knows which product is on it and which recipe is loaded. The ERP or MES knows the work order, the batch, the grade and the customer. That is where the record lives and where it stays. The Control Layer reads NetSuite, Infor M3, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, Cin7, Unleashed and Fishbowl, alongside WMS, MES, CMMS and in-house operational systems, through defined connection patterns: REST or SOAP, a read-only database view, a watched file drop, a message queue, an OPC UA or Modbus TCP tag read, and middleware your organisation already runs. Each pattern carries its own authentication model and its own documented failure edge, and the pattern is chosen with your IT team against what your environment runs today.
Why it matters: Whichever system already owns the batch number is the system that still owns it after handover.
- Step 2
The Control Layer reads the trigger the line already produces
A work order releasing to the floor, an operator scanning a job card, a marking instruction reached inside a cutting program the machine is already running, a register the PLC writes when the product changes, or a part breaking a beam on a conveyor. Each of those has its own failure behaviour, so each is specified separately and in writing before anything is ordered. The PLC posture is read only: the agreed tags are read, ladder logic and function blocks are left untouched, and any write is separately scoped and signed off before it exists. Which trigger the record is keyed to, and the security posture of the protocol carrying it, are settled at scope with your control engineer against the published connection patterns.
Why it matters: A record that depends on somebody typing the right number eventually holds the wrong one.
- Step 3
It composes the mark for that individual part
This is the step the category underestimates. For this part, on this surface, at this size, the Control Layer lays out the logo, the fixed text that never changes, the standards or grade text, the variable fields that came from your system, and the machine readable code, usually a Data Matrix generated to ISO/IEC 16022, or a QR. Module size, quiet zone and contrast are set so the reader your operation actually carries resolves the code in the condition the part will actually be in: wet, dusty, off angle, or at speed.
Why it matters: A code that grades well on a lab scanner and fails on the handheld at your dispatch door is a failed installation.
- Step 4
It fires while the part is moving
A galvo head steers the beam with a scanning mirror pair instead of moving the part, which is what makes marking on the fly possible. An encoder tracks the part and the mark geometry is compensated for line velocity, so a shape drawn onto a surface moving under the beam comes out true rather than sheared. The source is specified against the material and the parameters are established on your own material in the capability study.
Why it matters: Beam time is path length, not area, so the trade between mark content and line speed belongs at scope rather than at commissioning.
- Step 5
It writes the completion back against the job
The mark event goes back to the system that issued the code: timestamp, the identity of the machine and station that fired it, the exact string that was marked, the operator where there is one, and the verification result where a reader downstream grades the code before the part moves on. Records queue locally through an outage and replay in order carrying the original mark timestamp rather than the write time. Write access is scoped to the single field that carries mark confirmation, issued and revocable by you, and no personal staff login is requested or wanted.
Why it matters: A mark nobody confirmed is a claim. A confirmed mark with a timestamp and a machine identity is a record, and the record is the thing an auditor asks to see.
- Step 6
The record closes in the system that opened it
At the end of the round trip your system holds the data it always held, plus proof that the physical part now carries it. One parts table, one serial counter, one batch list, no migration and no weekly reconciliation job. What your ERP team provides is an integration point and a service account with defined scopes, specified in writing before hardware is ordered. The connection runs outbound from the marking station to your endpoint over TLS, so integrating a marking line requires no inbound path into the plant, and your business system stays unreachable from the public internet.
Why it matters: The lines still marking in year three are the lines that were never asked to maintain a second source of truth.
The plant never gets a second database to maintain
That constraint is the reason the architecture looks the way it does, so it is worth being specific about the failure it designs out.
Month one, a marking system goes in with its own parts table, its own serial counter and its own batch list, because that was the simpler thing for the vendor to build. It demonstrates well. Month two, somebody adds a product in the ERP and it is not added in the marking system, so a job stops at the station. Month three, the two systems disagree about a serial range and someone spends a morning working out which one is right. That reconciliation becomes a weekly job nobody was funded to do, and it lands on whoever has the least ability to refuse it. Month four, the line is behind, the marking station is the slowest thing on the floor, and an operator starts bypassing it. Nobody announces the decision. The system simply stops being the record.
So the Control Layer asks, marks and confirms, and the data stays where it was. Your PLC, ERP or MES remains the authority for the job, the batch and the code, whether that is NetSuite, Infor M3, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, Cin7, Unleashed, Fishbowl, a WMS, an MES, or the operational application somebody wrote in-house years ago and nobody is allowed to touch. No new master data for your team to maintain, no migration, and one system for your quality manager to validate. On a multi-site programme that constraint is set once for the group rather than negotiated site by site.
The practical test of the design is what an operator is able to get wrong. The operator never chooses a code. They scan a works order, or the cutter reaches a marking instruction inside a program it is already running, or a part breaks a beam on the conveyor, and the code arrives from the system that owns it. There is no keyboard step where a wrong number can be typed, and no local list that drifts out of date. Where an upstream identifier could collide across sites or lines, either the uniqueness rule is fixed in the source system or the mark carries a composite of site, line, date and run, agreed in writing before build.
Getting to that point is months of engineering per system. It is the reason the layer is the product and the source is a component.
What a permanent code carries
One pass puts everything a scanner and a person both need into the surface of the part. Nothing is attached, so nothing detaches.
Why there is nothing to refill
The mark is a change to the surface of the material, not a layer sitting on top of it. Depending on the source and the parameter set, the material anneals, oxidises, chars, foams, frosts or has an underlayer exposed. The consumable list for a marking cell is electricity, a protective window in front of the optics on a schedule set by the actual dust and resin load, and extraction filters. That is the whole list. No ink, no solvent, no ribbon, no label stock, no print head.
- Data Matrix and QR, carrying batch, date, serial or GS1 structured data in a single symbol. Data Matrix is generated to ISO/IEC 16022 and graded to ISO/IEC 15415, with linear symbologies graded to ISO/IEC 15416.
- Human readable text in the same pass as the code, so a person at arm's length and a scanner at the gate both identify the part without a second lookup.
- Serials, batch and lot codes, work order references, grade stamps, heat numbers, part numbers, ownership and asset marks, calibration references and brand logos.
- The source is selected against the material rather than against what is convenient: fibre at about 1064 nm on steel, stainless, aluminium, titanium and coated metal; MOPA pulse-controlled fibre where pulse duration, repetition rate and pulse energy have to move independently, typically 4 to 200 ns at 1.6 kHz to 1 MHz, for deep black inside an anodised layer or an annealed mark on stainless with no material removed; green at 515 or 532 nm on copper, brass, gold and silver, where absorption climbs sharply below about 600 nm; UV at 355 nm on glass, quartz, ceramics, PCBs and heat sensitive plastics, breaking the bond photochemically rather than heating it; CO2 at 9.3, 10.2 or 10.6 micron on timber, board, acrylic, film and coated surfaces, where 9.3 micron into PET is the difference between a readable code and no code at all; and ultrafast picosecond and femtosecond where a heat affected zone is itself the defect.
- We specify and integrate the source the material dictates, and the parameters are established on your own material in the capability study, which is what turns a published envelope into a number that belongs to your line.
- An annealed mark leaves the passive surface of stainless intact while an engraved mark breaks it and can become a corrosion site, so mark type is a real engineering decision rather than a setting.
- The mark survives caustic wash-down and cold store, weather and UV, handling and stacking, oil and coolant, coating (marked before finishing and read after it, or placed on a surface the finish does not cover), heat within the working range of the material itself, and years in service.
Read the engineering
Modules and rigs
Galvo heads, fixtures, rotaries, conveyors, vision alignment, counterbalanced arms and handheld rigs, designed and built in our Nelson facility around the parts you actually run.
How the code is read back on the floor
A mark is only worth what a scanner makes of it six months later, in the condition the part is actually in. Every read point the code has to satisfy is named at scope, and the accept threshold is set against the scanner class your operation carries rather than against a laboratory verifier.
- Symbol quality is graded per ISO/IEC 15415 for 2D and ISO/IEC 15416 for linear, which grade a symbol on measured parameters rather than on whether a scanner happened to resolve it once.
- The accept grade is written into the acceptance criteria before the build starts, against the reader your people carry: a fixed-mount imager at the gate, a handheld at the dispatch door, a long range reader off a forklift, and your customer's goods-in scanner at the other end.
- Module size, quiet zone and contrast are chosen for the condition of the part at the read point, not at the mark point: wet, dusty, iced, off angle, or moving.
- A Data Matrix crossing an LVL glue line can lose symbol grade because the glue and the wood either side do not burn the same way, so codes are placed deliberately against the product geometry rather than dropped on a nominal position.
- Where a reader sits immediately downstream, every code is verified in line and the result is written back alongside the mark record, so the grade is a measured value in your system rather than an assumption.
- Hold or divert on a failed verification is chosen by you and written into the acceptance specification before the build starts, along with what the operator sees and what the record shows.
- Grade is a process signal over time. A code that grades B at commissioning and C six months later is telling you about lens contamination, focus drift or a change in the substrate, and it is visible in the record before it is visible at a customer's goods-in.
The mark is applied inside the line, not at a station beside it
A marking cell that needs somebody to carry parts to it is a second handling step, and second handling steps get skipped when the shift is behind. Operators do not sabotage traceability, they deprioritise it, quite reasonably. The core is deployment-form independent, and the form is chosen so the mark lands without adding a move.
- Galvo heads marking on the fly over a moving line. The beam is steered by mirrors and the geometry is compensated for line velocity, so the part never stops. The measured speed envelope and the five variables that move it are published above.
- In-fixture marking: a head added into a fibre or CO2 cutter you already own. The machine pauses part way through a cut it is already running, the code lands on the part exactly where it sits in the fixture, and the cutter resumes the same job. The part number never leaves the fixture, so it can never be attached to another part's record.
- Counterbalanced arm rigs, designed and built in our Nelson facility, for fabrications and castings too large or too heavy to move. The head travels to the part on the bench or in the bay, the job comes off a scan of the works order, and the operator positions rather than programs.
- Handheld rigs, also built in Nelson, for yard work, field marking and assets already in service. The job list is pushed to the unit from the system that owns the record rather than typed into it, so a field mark carries the same identifier as a factory mark.
- Inline heads over conveyors and packing lines, marking cartons, trays, crates and totes at line speed, with a reader immediately downstream grading every code and failed reads diverting rather than shipping.
- Fixtures and jigs cut for your actual parts, so position and orientation repeat without an operator eyeballing it. Repeatable position is what makes a small 2D code read first time rather than on the third attempt.
- Enclosures, extraction, interlocks and a rated safety circuit specified for the zone the rig lands in, including wash-down areas, food contact areas and dusty timber lines. Class 4 laser safety is designed into the install against ISO 11553-1, IEC 60825-1, IEC 60204-1 and ISO 13849-1 rather than added to it afterwards.
What it replaces: printed labels and continuous inkjet coding
Most plants carry identity today on a continuous inkjet code or a printed label. The full mechanism, droplet by droplet, and the method selection argument have their own page. The short version is here: the record does not change, the carrier does.
Method selection: small character coding
A laser deposits nothing. Every laser mark is the substrate reacting to energy, so where a specific print colour is mandatory on the pack, or a single line date code runs on a plant whose consumable spend is small and whose line runs a few hours a week, we specify continuous inkjet, a printed panel or a laser reactive coating laid down at the converter, and we say so at the scope rather than at commissioning. That is a printing requirement and we specify it as one.
- Ink and make-up solvent stop being an annual account. A laser marking cell runs on electricity, a protective window and extraction filters.
- Head cleans, blocked jets and drifting alignment stop being line time. Continuous inkjet coders from Markem-Imaje, Domino and Videojet are capable machines that still need servicing, and every service call is production you did not get. A coder down mid-run also leaves a gap in the record, because the units that went past uncoded still have to be identified and accounted for afterwards.
- Print quality stays on spec because there is no print. No drift, no partial characters, and no pallet rejected at a customer's goods-in because the code faded across a run.
- The mark stays on the part. Ink smudges, scuffs and washes. A code formed in the material survives wash-down, weather, handling, coating and time in service.
- Adhesive labels fail exactly where identity matters most: wash-down, cold store, oil and UV. Thermal print fades under abrasion and sunlight, so a failed label is often still attached and no longer readable, which is worse than losing it outright.
The full comparison
Laser against continuous inkjet
The incumbent mechanism explained in full, droplet by droplet, then the structural argument on consumables, uptime and capital, then how the method is selected against the substrate, the code and the consumable spend.
The regulatory picture, with every date attributed to the body that issued it
Precision matters more than urgency here. Where an instrument is a retailer led transition target rather than a law, this table says so, because a date published without the body that issued it is not a requirement. Verify the current position with GS1, MPI or your certifying body for your own sector before you plan against a date.
| Who this applies to | What it is | The specific requirement | What that means for the mark |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food businesses operating in New Zealand | NZ Food Act 2014. Law. | One-up one-down traceability. Outcome based: no technology and no barcode format is mandated. Records kept 4 years minimum. | You choose the carrier. The Act cares that you can trace one step back and one step forward, and that the records still exist 4 years later. |
| Anyone selling through retail | GS1 Sunrise 2027. An industry transition target, not a legal mandate. | By 31 December 2027, retail point of sale systems should be capable of scanning 2D barcodes, QR and Data Matrix, alongside 1D EAN and UPC. It is driven by retailer buying power, including Walmart, Target, Carrefour and Tesco, not by legislation, and no penalty is attached to it. | Retailers are moving. There is no legal obligation on you to follow. If you are changing your coding method anyway, moving to a 2D symbol now avoids doing the work twice. |
| Any NZ supplier running a voluntary recall | Fair Trading Act s31A. Law. | A voluntary recall must be reported to MBIE within 2 working days. | Two working days is the window in which you have to know what is in scope. Batch level identity on the physical item is what narrows the answer inside that window. |
| Dairy and meat exporters | Registered Risk Management Programme, enforced by MPI. | A registered and verified Risk Management Programme, plus the Overseas Market Access Requirements of each destination market. | The mark has to satisfy your own RMP and the destination market's requirements. Those are set by the market and by MPI. |
| Seafood processors and exporters | Traceability from catch through export. | Documenting vessel identity, catch dates, lot numbers and premises identity through the chain. | Identity has to survive caustic wash-down, ice and cold store, which is the first place an adhesive label fails. |
| Exporters into the United States | US FSMA 204. | Compliance date extended to 20 July 2028. Applies to certain foods, including seafood, produce, cheeses and shell eggs. | Lot level records tied to the physical item, which means the lot code has to be on the item and still readable when the question is asked. |
| EV and industrial batteries into the EU | EU Digital Product Passport. | Begins 18 February 2027 for EV and industrial batteries over 2 kWh, expanding to other categories later. | A per item identifier that resolves to a record, which is what a Data Matrix or QR marked into the item does. |
| Timber and wood processing | No legal traceability requirement in New Zealand. | FSC and PEFC chain of custody are voluntary certification schemes. They are not law, and no penalty attaches to them. | Timber buys this for ink and solvent spend, line uptime, mark durability and a brand that stays legible at line speed. A compliance story sold into timber is a story about something that is not there. |
Recall containment is arithmetic, and batch granularity is the variable
A peer reviewed study puts the median cost of an overly broad recall at USD 8.2 million, with cases exceeding USD 72.7 million. That is a finding across the businesses that study examined. It is not a prediction about yours. The reason to quote it is the mechanism behind it, and the mechanism does apply to yours.
When something goes wrong, the boundary of the recall is not the boundary of the problem. It is the boundary of what you can defend. If the finest identity you can prove on a physical unit is the day or the production week it was made, then the day or the week is your recall, and everything inside it goes, including all of the product that was fine.
Finer batch granularity narrows that boundary. If the unit sitting in a customer's hand carries a batch code that your own system issued and a laser formed into the item, the recall is that batch. The arithmetic from there is yours to run rather than ours to claim, because you already know your product value per pallet, your freight, your rework capacity, and what a customer's line stoppage costs you. Multiply the difference between a week and a batch by your own numbers and you have the business case without a vendor building one for you.
Two things move that arithmetic. First, finer batches mean more code changes per shift, and code changes are only cheap when the code arrives automatically from the system that owns it, which is the entire reason this page is about the record architecture rather than about the laser. Second, under Fair Trading Act s31A a voluntary recall has to be reported to MBIE within 2 working days, so the useful question is not only how narrow your boundary is, but how quickly you can prove where it sits.
One record architecture, and a different buying driver in every sector
Timber. Meat. Seafood. Packhouse. Marine. Logistics. Precision engineering. The same composition engine, the same connection patterns with their authentication models and failure edges, the same failure behaviour and the same acceptance document set are specified across all of them, and only the source and the parameter set change. Nobody buys marking for the same reason twice, so each page below leads with the driver that is real for that sector.
Start here
Timber and wood processing
Bought on ink and solvent spend, line uptime, mark durability and a brand that stays legible at full line speed. FSC and PEFC are voluntary and there is no traceability law for timber in New Zealand.
Food, seafood and aquaculture
Bought on recall containment. Food Act 2014 one-up one-down with records kept 4 years, the 2 working day MBIE reporting window, export chain requirements, and identity that survives caustic wash-down and cold store.
Manufacturing and fabrication
Bought on part-level identity tied to the ERP job. The part is anonymous from the second it drops out of the nest, so the work order number and serial land in the fixture on the cutter you already own.
Marine and heavy engineering
Bought on certification and service life traceability. Grade, heat number and assembly reference formed deep enough to survive blast, paint and salt, and readable at survey years later. We specify to and verify against MIL-STD-130 and AS9132 where your operation works to them.
Logistics and reusable assets
Bought on shrinkage and register accuracy. A returnable asset nobody can identify has already been partly written off. Codes sized to read from a forklift, wet and off angle, writing straight back to the warehouse or transport system.
Asset and equipment marking
Bought on ownership, calibration and maintenance records. An asset you cannot identify is an asset you will buy twice. Small format codes on hardened tool steel and instrument bodies, tied to the asset register or the maintenance system that already holds the schedule.
Branded production and signage
Bought on margin and lead time. One line cuts, engraves and marks across timber, acrylic and metal, so product identification that has to look right on a surface the customer sees stops depending on someone else's queue.
Standards a customer or an auditor references
These are the documents that come up when someone asks how a mark is judged rather than whether it scanned. Light Lane specifies to, designs to, verifies against and supplies documentation for each of them, and verification runs on the reader your operation actually carries. Where a formal certification is required, that sits between you and the certifying body.
| Standard | What it defines | When it comes up |
|---|---|---|
| ISO/IEC 16022 | The Data Matrix symbology itself: encoding, error correction and symbol structure. | Whenever a customer specifies Data Matrix rather than just asking for a 2D code. |
| ISO/IEC 15415 | Print quality grading for 2D symbols. It grades a symbol on measured parameters rather than on whether a scanner happened to read it once. | When a customer sets a minimum grade on incoming parts, or when a mark passes on your reader and grades lower on theirs. |
| ISO/IEC 15416 | The equivalent print quality grading method for 1D linear barcodes. | On legacy label and carton coding that still runs EAN, UPC or Code 128 alongside a 2D symbol. |
| MIL-STD-130 | The US Department of Defense standard for item unique identification, covering how the identifier is constructed and applied to the item. | On defence work and anywhere in a defence supply chain, including subcontract fabrication. |
| AS9132 | Aerospace quality requirements for direct part marking, covering the physical mark as well as the symbol read from it. | On aerospace parts, and on any customer who has borrowed the aerospace specification because it is the strictest one they could find. |
| ISO 11553-1 and IEC 60825-1 | Machine safety for laser processing machines, and laser product classification with the associated beam containment requirements. | At install specification, because Class 4 safety is enclosure, interlocks, beam containment and a rated safety circuit rather than an accessory. |
Engineering questions, answered with numbers
What does marking on the fly cost the line?
Nothing in stopped time. A galvo head steers the beam with a scanning mirror pair, so the mark is drawn onto a moving product rather than the product being indexed and held, and the geometry is compensated for line velocity against the encoder the line already has. On an in-fixture retrofit the mark happens inside a pause the machine already takes in its own program. The real budget is drawing time: a typical timber brand holds across roughly 40 to 120 m/min on one head, a full height dense brand tops out around 75 to 85 m/min, and above that the specification is a second head sharing the mark on the same encoder. Those are typical envelopes from our own testing, and the binding figure for your line is measured on your parts during the capability study and written into the acceptance criteria before the build starts.
How does this sit with the barcode system we already run?
Keep it. If your system issues a code, the Control Layer marks that code, and your existing scanners keep reading. What changes is the carrier, not the system. A linear barcode on a label holds one number and depends on the label staying attached. A Data Matrix generated to ISO/IEC 16022 and formed into the part carries batch, date and serial in one symbol and stays with the part. Where an operation is moving to a 2D symbol anyway because its retail customers are heading that way by 31 December 2027, doing it as part of a marking programme costs less than doing it twice.
How is a wet, oily or hot part handled?
Each of those is a separate engineering answer and none of them is unusual. Oil and coolant are handled with an air knife or a wipe station immediately before the head, or by marking at a point in the flow where the part is already clean. Wet is fine for the mark itself and the constraint is the read, so module size, contrast and process are chosen for a wet surface at the read point. Hot depends on how hot and on the alloy, and it moves the parameter set rather than the method. Moving is standard work. Every one of those is established on your own material in the Marking Process Capability Study: send a box of parts in the material and finish you actually ship in, and the numbered report comes back with the substrate and surface condition as received, the parameter set, the verification grade against the applicable standard, the durability result against the conditions you state, and the determined process window.
What does our ERP team actually provide?
An integration point and a service account with defined scopes, and that is the whole ask. Read access to the job or batch fields the mark is composed from, write access to the single field carrying mark confirmation, and a PLC signal tap. Scopes are least privilege and follow the connection pattern chosen, which is published pattern by pattern. No personal staff login is requested or wanted. Your PLC, ERP or MES stays the authority for the job, the batch and the code, there is no migration and no new master data, and the connection runs outbound from the station to your endpoint over TLS. All of it is written into the interface specification, with a named owner on each side, before hardware is ordered.
How is the system supported once it is running?
Response is committed by severity tier, and the engineer who wrote your interface specification and commissioned your line is the one who answers. S1 is a stopped line with no workaround: remote diagnosis on the software, integration and controller side starts on the first call, and site attendance is triggered where the fault sits in the rig, the optics, the extraction or the safety circuit. The committed times are set against your site location, shift pattern, on-site spares holding and whether the line can run degraded, priced in the proposal you approve and written into the support agreement before commissioning. Every source, head, controller and interlock is standard industrial equipment from named manufacturers through their New Zealand channel, and hardware carries manufacturer backed warranty through the distributor the machine came from.
What does the operator actually do?
They present the part and they read the record. The operator never chooses a code, never types a serial and never builds a job, because the mark is composed from the system that owns the answer. What they learn is what a good mark looks like, what happens when a code grades below threshold, who authorises a remark, and how to clean a lens. Training runs on your own jobs rather than on examples, and more than one person is trained, because a single trained operator takes annual leave. The difficulty in laser marking sits in the setup, which is our work. The daily operation is theirs, and it should be dull.
What happens when the network drops mid-shift?
The station keeps marking. It runs from a pull-ahead cache rather than calling the business system per part, so an ERP maintenance window or a dropped link never stops a physical line, and completion records queue locally and replay in order carrying the original mark timestamp rather than the write time. That is the difference between an audit trail and a fiction. Cache depth and hold duration are sized against your run length and line rate at the specification stage and written into the acceptance criteria as a number. If the cache runs dry the station stops issuing marks rather than composing from stale data: it never invents an identifier, never substitutes a default, never writes a placeholder and never increments a serial itself. An identifier the station made up is worse than a blank part, because it enters your record as truth and scans perfectly for years.
Read the published operating envelope, then measure it on your own material
The specification page carries the material compatibility matrix with its engineering notes, the source selection matrix, the symbol grading standards and the measured speed envelope with the five variables that move it. Every figure on it is a typical envelope from our own testing. The binding number for your line comes from a Marking Process Capability Study: post a representative part in the material and surface condition it actually ships in, tell us what happens to it afterwards, the wash, the chemistry, the abrasion, the years outdoors, the scanner class your operation carries, and you receive a numbered report stating the substrate and surface condition as received, the parameter set, the verification grade against the applicable standard, the durability result against those conditions, and the determined process window. Bring the system that holds your batch and serial data to the site scope and the interface pattern gets specified against what your IT team already sanctions.
Last updated August 21, 2026