A customer contacted me from the narrow web / label industry recently and provided the image above (please excuse the typo). They have a static problem on their narrow web processing machine. While that isn’t a big surprise, the symptom of their problem was quite interesting. The customer is applying RFID tags to this narrow web and re-winding the web back onto the roll you see bottom right in the photo above. And their problem is that the static being generated within the re-winding process is enough to cause as many as 25% of their RFID tags to go dead as a result of discharges within the roll itself. Figuring that static was his problem, the customer contacted EXAIR and we recommended that he use two model 7006 Ion Bars and one model 7907 Power Supply to treat both sides of the web just before it is re-wound onto the roll. The point where the red arrow is located indicates the suggested mounting point. The web was travelling slowly enough that simply passing through a couple of ion bars would remove the charge down to a more manageable level that would not interfere with operation of the RFID tags.
Once installed, the customer was able to eliminate the damage to the RFID tags caused by static discharge.
Neal Raker, Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com