Confidex's Ironside Plate Flexes Its Muscles For Industrial RFID Tagging With Engraved Personalization

The new Ironside Plate results from custom design work for a global agency by Confidex DesignStudio, leveraging a team of expert R&D engineers and industrial-grade lab.

To develop a solution that brings the digital intelligence of RFID together with reliable visual markings of a standard ID plate, all in a rugged environment, Confidex Ltd. has engineered the latest member of its Ironside products for industrial settings. The technology company teamed with a large intergovernmental organization, leveraging the Confidex DesignStudio program to co-create a unique product for the organization’s needs. The result is the Ironside Plate – with durable visual marking and encasing – that boasts an industry-class rugged design for harsh environment, track and trace applications. This IP68 rated RAIN RFID tag uniquely identifies assets, equipment and products no matter where they are, both by RFID reader interrogation and manually with its laser-engraved visual marks that are legible even in dirty or industrial environments. In fact, the Ironside Plate is one of the most rugged hard RFID tags available.

The Ironside Plate helps solve logistical challenges related to tracking goods in supply chains, industrial environments, and harsh conditions. This durable tag also benefits from Confidex’s collaboration with Aton SB S.p.A our Italian IOT partner specialized in the software integration and management of large RFID and IOT based projects. The new tag can be uniquely identified whether users are equipped with RFID readers, or not. In this way, Ironside Plate breaks the barriers between RFID and traditional ID plates. This latest member of the Ironside family also serves up high sensitivity and reliability for tracking all kinds of metallic high value items, for container tracking, construction and public utilities.

Industry-leading visual marking
Its key features include an aluminium encasing with anti-corrosion coating and bottom stainless-steel plate, to make it more robust than standard tags. And like other Ironside products, its IP68 hard tag rating ensures it operates reliably outdoors and in harsh locations. And this thin tag – just 3.7 millimetres – boasts exceptional performance. Leveraging NXP’s UCODE 8 IC, the tag responds to readers up to ten meters when on metal, and seven meters on plastic surfaces.

For visual identification, the Ironside Plate’s laser engraving ensures its human readable numbers are not affected by harsh environments. This laser engraving process, in fact, provides a vast improvement over the visual marking quality of standard tags.

Development of the Ironside Plate took place as a Confidex DesignStudio project for which the technology company worked closely with its international customer to design a solution that fit the organization’s needs. DesignStudio brings custom products to life, with unique products or standard product modifications to meet specific needs, whether simple or complex. With DesignStudio, companies can benefit from the finest R&D team and industrial grade lab, as well as expert project and product management, and state of the art in-house manufacturing.

“We are proud to collaborate with Confidex leveraging our 20-year experience on RFID technology related projects to help create this powerful new product to meet our customer’s unique challenges for wide, global operations in harsh conditions where field technology must be orchestrated by an adequate software solution.” says Andrew Pigozzo, Head of Energy & Industrials Business Unit, Aton SB S.p.A.

Ironside Plate is available for orders and samples today. For more information, visit Confidex Ironside Product Family website