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  Magnetic marking system, method and machine for producing the sameUSPTO Application #: 20070240809Title: Magnetic marking system, method and machine for producing the same Abstract: The invention relates to a marking system comprising wires exhibiting ultrasoft ferromagnetic properties. Said wires are arranged on or in a carrier and are associated with pre-established parallel positions which are separated by a constant gap according to a pre-established frame. The wires can be present or absent in each position, forming a detectable binary code. The inventive marking system can especially be embodied as a magnetically coded label. The invention also relates to a method for producing one such marking system by continuously incorporating ferromagnetic wires into an adhesive complex. The inventive marking system is used to identify and authenticate articles, products or objects. (end of abstract) Agent: Oliff & Berridge, PLC - Alexandria, VA, US Inventor: Bernard Boulay USPTO Applicaton #: 20070240809 - Class: 156152000 (USPTO) Related Patent Categories: Adhesive Bonding And Miscellaneous Chemical Manufacture, Methods, Surface Bonding And/or Assembly Therefor, With Temporary Disassembling And Subsequent Bonding Of Same Laminae The Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20070240809. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
[0001] This is a Divisional of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/510,920 filed on Oct. 12, 2004, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. This application claims priority to France Patent Application No. FR 02/04,607 filed Apr. 12, 2002, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. [0002] The present invention relates in a general manner to the marking of articles, of products or of objects, with a view to their identification and/or to their authentication. This invention pertains, more particularly, to a system for secure marking, by "magnetically coded label" or the like that can be "read" with the aid of an appropriate detector. The marking system according to the invention possesses diverse applications: [0003] protection against the counterfeiting of industrial products, by authentication of the original products; [0004] traceability of products or of articles, via batches or product series, or possibly via an individual article; [0005] identification of products or of articles, in commercial circles, as a supplement or possibly as a replacement for the traditional optical bar code. [0006] The identification of articles and of products by optical bar code is currently well known, but it comprises drawbacks. In particular, an optical bar code may easily be reproduced with the aid of a scanner or a commercial photocopier, or modified, so that it offers no genuine security. Moreover, the necessarily visible nature of an optical bar code may give rise to drawbacks of an esthetic character, for certain kinds of objects or articles. [0007] Systems for marking by magnetic labels have already been envisaged, even if they are currently not very widespread. By way of examples, mention may be made here of the proposals contained in the documents FR 2344346, U.S. Pat. No. 4,964,951, U.S. Pat. No. 5,175,419 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,729,201. These documents disclose: [0008] use of wider or narrower parallel magnetized bands, that are therefore too easily visible (not transparent); [0009] use of wires of variable length, combined with magnets, resulting in a complex embodiment; [0010] combination of wires having different magnetic characteristics; [0011] simple association of magnetized wires, all equidistant, thereby precluding any possibility of coding. [0012] Most of the solutions already proposed therefore remain fairly complex, and hence expensive, by calling in particular upon complex and poorly controlled magnetic phenomena, without this resulting in improved security. In particular, for certain systems that utilize the length of wires or bands having magnetic properties, an interruption to these wires or bands may cause a modification of the response of the system. Furthermore, the known systems offer only a limited number of combinations for carrying out genuine coding, similar to a traditional bar code, or else they achieve this only at the price of excessive complication, both at the level of the label itself and at the level of the detector to be used to "read" this label. [0013] The present invention aims to remedy all of these drawbacks, by providing a magnetic marking system which, while still being particularly simple and discreet, proves to be extremely reliable and allows coding with very many combinations. [0014] For this purpose, the subject of the invention is essentially a magnetic marking system, which comprises, on or in a carrier, in correspondence with pre-established parallel positions separated by a constant gap according to a pre-established frame, one or more wires having ultrasoft ferromagnetic properties, these parallel wires being present or absent in each of said positions so as to form, through the set of wires present or absent, a detectable binary code. [0015] In one embodiment of the invention, the carrier is of the two-dimensional type and constituted by a sheet of adhesive-coated material, which fixes the wires having ultrasoft ferromagnetic properties in their pre-established positions. This adhesive-coated carrier sheet is advantageously covered, at least in its initial state, with a protective sheet, of the silicone-coated paper kind, which thus also covers the wires. [0016] As a variant, the carrier is of the three-dimensional type, in which case the wires having ferromagnetic properties are embedded in the thickness of this carrier, at a small depth, by comparison with the distance of two neighboring wires, so as in all cases to allow detection by contact or by quasi-contact, with the aid of an electromagnetic detector moving over the surface. [0017] The wires used for the production of such a marking are, preferably, glass-clad amorphous ferromagnetic filaments whose mode of production is explained in "Ferromagnetic resonance in amorphous magnetic wires", by S. A. BARANON et al., Phys. Met. Metall., No. 1, volume 67, pages 70 to 75, 1989. [0018] The metal core of such filaments possesses a diameter of the order of some ten to a few tens of microns, while the thickness of the glass cladding does not exceed a few microns so that the total diameter of the filaments does not exceed 50 microns and that the filaments may be embedded in the adhesive mass of the carrier. The metal core of these filaments is made from an amorphous magnetic alloy essentially composed of cobalt or of iron, of nickel, of boron, of silicon and of carbon, in variable proportions that may be: [0019] Fe or Co>40%, [0020] 0<Ni<20%, [0021] 18%<Si+B+C<35% [0022] of other elements that may also be introduced with amounts of less than 7%. [0023] Such wires, by dint of their amorphous structure, may exhibit according to their composition a positive or negative coefficient of macnetostriction, and they possess a relatively weak magnetic field at saturation (coercive field) (from 50 to 500 A/m), these properties being variable as a function of the composition of the alloy as well as of the relative proportions of alloy and of glass. A more precise description regarding the magnetic properties of these wires may be found in: "Magnetic hysteresis in glass-covered and water-quenched amorphous wires" by H. CHIRIAC et al., Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 177-181, pages 205 and 206, 1998. [0024] As far as the detection device to be used to "read" the marking is concerned, this is advantageously a portable device, consisting of an excitation coil making it possible to create, in the space or immediate vicinity of the wire, an alternating magnetic field of greater strength than the saturation field of the wire to be detected, and of two balanced reception coils, mounted in opposition, in such a way as not to detect any response signal in the absence of a wire situated in proximity, inside the excitation volume zone. On the other hand, when one of the ferromagnetic wires of a marking is close to the excitation coil, said marking will undergo the influence of its magnetic field and its induced magnetization will describe a hysteresis cycle at the same frequency as the excitation. The wire will then re-emit an electromagnetic field of the same frequency which will be detected essentially by that of the two reception coils that is situated closest to the wire, by virtue of an appropriate design of the detector. By appropriate processing of the signal thus received on the detection device, it is possible to determine the presence of a wire in proximity to the detection device. Consequently, by displacing this portable detection device, in a direction transverse to the magnetic marking wires, it becomes possible to "read" instantaneously the binary code borne by this marking. [0025] Thus, the idea underlying the invention consists in the use of ferromagnetic wires of identical nature, all possessing the same ultrasoft magnetic properties allowing their detection with the aid of an electromagnetic excitation of proximity, and of low power (this detection being independent of the length of the wires), these wires being positioned in a precise manner on or in a carrier, in the manner of a bar code. The marking system thus constituted comprises, by comparison with all the solutions previously proposed, a number of important advantages: [0026] The wires used being able to possess a very restricted diameter, lying between ten and fifty microns, the system remains invisible to the naked eye, and also imperceptible to the touch. This makes it possible to place the wires on a transparent carrier sheet, for example made of a transparent plastic, the assembly being able to be placed on other normal labels while remaining invisible. [0027] The possibilities of coding are almost unlimited, given the very large number of possible combinations of the number of wires and of the relative positioning of these wires. [0028] The principles of coding and of detection call neither upon a differentiation of the magnetic properties of the wires, nor upon a choice of their length, provided that this length is greater than a minimum value, of the order of 5 millimeters. The system therefore remains particularly simple, both as regards the structure of the marking itself, and as regards detection. [0029] All the parallel wires being identical (in diameter, length, composition, magnetic properties, coercivity), one thus avoids the risk of errors during the manipulation of the coils of wires, for the production of the magnetic markings. [0030] Insofar as the length of the wires exerts no influence, an interruption of these wires (for example by a "cutter" blow) would not be able to neutralize the system, which continues to provide a well-identified response. [0031] The ferromagnetic wires may be embedded in any molded or fashioned material, or be included in a textile carrier, thereby rendering the marking yet more discreet, and incorporable directly into a product or object. [0032] The flexibility of the wires, and as appropriate of their carrier, permits any configuration of label, in particular to form a magnetically coded label to be applied to a cylindrical surface, such as the body of the bottle. [0033] The magnetic properties utilized here of the wires are very insensitive to variations in temperature, within a wide span (from -50.degree. C. to +80.degree. C. for example), unlike LC type resonating magnetic circuits screen-printed on magnetic labels that can be interrogated at high frequency, in which the capacitance, hence the resonant frequency, varies substantially with temperature, given the thermal variation of the permittivity of the dielectric used. [0034] The wires being constituted from an ultrasoft amorphous magnetic alloy, they possess weak coercivity which makes it possible to call upon heads of proximity detectors of very weak radiated field, hence having very low power consumption, thereby increasing the autonomy of the portable detectors. [0035] The detection of presence or of absence of the wires, intervening as secondary antennas, is performed through an analysis of the harmonics generated by these wires as they approach magnetic saturation. Thus, the geometrical arrangement of the parallel wires, and the coding that it permits, lend themselves well to an analysis of the response by signal processing, with implementation of processing software that can tolerate a certain degree of error in the calibration of the gaps between wires, thereby greatly facilitating the design of the machines carrying out the laying of the wires. [0036] Since the coding is based on wires having soft magnetic properties, it cannot be destroyed, altered or erased by a stray magnetic field, created deliberately or by chance, and of high strength, in contradistinction to many existing magnetic coding systems based on magnetically "hard" elements, such as bank cards, magnetic stripe cards, or labels with two magnetic layers (one hard and the other soft). [0037] The small diameter of the wires precludes detection thereof by antennas for electronic monitoring of articles (so-called EAS antennas). [0038] The response of each wire is independent of the strength of the excitation field delivered by the detector (on condition that the minimum strength value for saturating the wires is achieved), and this response is therefore always the same, thereby facilitating the adjustment of the field strength of the excitation coil. [0039] The principle of parallel wires allows easy production of the magnetic markings in question, continuously or semi-continuously, with sectioning to the desired length. [0040] By way of example, the number of wires of the magnetically coded label according to the invention lies between a minimum of one and a maximum of five. These wires may comprise, in addition to the wires defining a binary code, a first wire for tagging the start of the reading zone, in which the wires defining the binary code are positioned. [0041] In the reading zone, the spacing between the possible positions of wires is preferably equal at the minimum to 2 millimeters, such a minimum "pitch" being necessary to distinguish the wires during detection, while preventing several wires from being located simultaneously inside the zone of critical excitation strength, or preventing these wires from having an influence on one another. The "pitch" is chosen as a function of the dimensions of the labels and of the number of wires, this "pitch" possibly reaching several millimeters. The useful width of the labels (dimension transverse to the wires) may lie between a few millimeters and several centimeters, such a dimension permitting the use of a binary code having several tens of bits, thus offering numerous combinations. Continue reading... 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