It should be clear, clearly visible and permanent: high-quality labeling ensures safety and simplifies work processes. Changes in production, conversion, modernization or maintenance measures - all these work processes can be carried out much more efficiently if all components are uniformly and clearly labeled. Printing, separating and mounting markings on cables, conductors and components - these tasks alone account for up to 30 % of the total production time of an enclosure.

Automated industrial labeling

At least that was the case until now. According to the manufacturer, the Thermomark E Series marking system from Phoenix Contact is the first modular system to automate and combine the printing and application of different marking materials in just one process step. In this way, time savings of around 60% can be achieved in industrial marking. Instead of printing the required conductor and cable marking solutions separately in an initial work step and then separating the individual markers, including the subsequent process step of time-consuming manual assembly, the Thermomark E-Series provides users with a simple and efficient type of marking process. The automated printing and application process is intuitive to use and ensures consistently high marking quality, which in turn has a positive effect on the longevity and durability of the marking solution. This results in consistently high efficiency throughout the entire working day.

The Thermomark E-Series consists of four applicators that offer different marking solutions for wire and cable marking as well as terminal marking. The four applicators are connected to a standard thermal transfer roll printer, which is otherwise used for printing all marking materials in roll format - such as for creating labels for equipment identification. This means that no additional, special device is required to implement the respective marking solution. This provides the user with a modular marking system that can be used flexibly and in line with requirements. Whether in the field of manual equipment marking or automated conductor and cable marking. In the project business in particular, this offers the advantage of being able to react flexibly to the respective customer or application requirements in just a few simple steps. This saves resources and space.

Three applicators for automated labeling

Three different applicators are available to the user for the automated marking of conductors and cables. The Thermomark E.Wire can be used to create radially and axially movable cable markers that can be labeled on three sides thanks to their triangular shape. This results in good visibility when installed. The marker cannot be lost thanks to the heat-sealed seam. Thanks to the endless format, all diameter ranges between 1.8 and 5.6 mm can be covered with just one material, which is available in various widths. The cable diameter is measured automatically for easy operation. The optimum size of the marker is determined on this basis with software support.

The Thermomark E.Sleeve applicator processes shrink sleeves in continuous format and cuts them individually to any length between 15 and 51 mm. It also opens the shrink sleeve for easy and time-saving application of the printed markers to conductors and cables. Thanks to automatic object recognition by light barriers, finished marked cables can be removed effectively. The general operation is also simple: although the applicator covers diameter ranges from 0.8 to 8.5 mm, the automatic adjustment to the respective shrink sleeve size means that the user does not have to make any set-up work.

With the Thermomark E.Wrap, cable wrap labels are automatically applied to cylindrical bodies between 2 and 16 mm - with consistently high quality. This is particularly important for cable wrap labels, as they have an additional protective laminate to protect the printed surface. This results in a particularly resistant labeling solution that can also be used outdoors, for example. To make handling as easy as possible, the device has an adjustable measuring scale, which ensures that the marking is always applied at the desired distance from the cable end.

The Thermomark E-series system solution is rounded off by target group-oriented software functions: Application-related data exports from common CAE systems ensure automatic and time-saving data processing. A large number of intuitive functions are available for easy creation of the marking data. The marking software guides the user step-by-step through the entire cable marking process - both via the display on the printer for working directly on the control cabinet and via the marking software on the desktop PC.