This week Xerafy debuted the Metal Skin^TM, the world’s first true UHF EPC RFID inlay designed for tracking metal assets.

Based on the Impinj Monza 4QT IC, Metal Skin is super thin, lightweight, and flexible enough to be used on the curved surface of metallic cylinders to the backside of an Apple iPad. It can be converted into different form factors such as smart tickets, labels and tags using standard label converting equipment and printing processes.

Metal Skin is a game changing innovation that transforms RFID for metal tracking and Xerafy’s customers who have a sneak peak to evaluate the product have been totally blown away by the inlay form factor  and unbelievable performance. The initialization of Metal Skin, as with any of our products, always start with our customers’ unmet needs and the compelling value proposition to create a cost effective, low-profile and flexible tag for tracking metallic items globally.  We wanted to create a “middle product”, ie between an inlay and a metal tag, of what’s existing today, that could potentially be disposable and serve the mass market for tracking metal assets. Something that can easily fit into existing conversion processes with minor modifications and jump-start new markets to adopt RFID or incentivize the shift of early adopters to the majority.

I remembered vividly the summer of 2010, Drew Nathanson, Vice President, Auto ID at VDC Research, over the phone said, “We’ve just concluded a study and the market has indicated Consumer Electronics is looking to adopt RFID for Product Authentication at an accelerated scale within the next few years”. At that time, when the idea of a metal label came about within Xerafy, the Engineering team just laughed it off as it’s against the norm and the Science out there! However, the market requirement never went away and so the idea never really went awayas well. We kept challenging Engineering to relook and rethink this and around late last year, they finally had a break-though, discovering a new way around conventional RF design to disrupt the metal tag. We never looked back since.

With 6 patents pending, Metal Skin will undoubtedly open up a whole new floodgate of applications for our customers, converter partners and solution providers, enabling them to provide converted labels that can now be RFID-enabled for metals for product authentication, high-value asset tracking, laptop tracking and the global courier supply chain. Indeed, the possibilities are only limited by your imagination.

As seen at RFID Live 2011, Xerafy releases the XS Series of RFID tags for production.  The XS Series is the world’s smallest passive UHF EPC Class 1 Gen 2 RFID metal tag.  The breakthrough in size will open up the door for source tagging of small tools and surgical instruments that until now have been impossible to tag.  The truly revolutionary feat is that these ultra small and thin RFID tags still have unbelievable read distance performance. 

Our engineering team worked hard in designing small and rugged RFID metal tags to bring to our customers the ultimate solution for tracking small tools and medical instruments.  The XS Series high performance RFID metal tags are designed to comply with FDA UDI requirements for Unique Device Identification initiative for medical devices to enable automatic tracking for improved productivity and reduced risks in foreign object debris (FOD), infection control, and product recalls. The tags are biocompatible to ensure safety in medical applications and have been tested to survive high heat in repeated autoclave cycles and industrial chemical washes that normally complicate the application of RFID devices. 

The XS tags come in two form factors, the Dot XS and the Dash XS. The Dot XS is round and measures at 6 mm diameter by 2.5 mm thick with a read distance of 1.5 meters (5 ft). The Dash XS is 12 x 3 x 2.2 mm with a read distance of 2 meters (6.6 ft). The tags can be mounted directly on metal parts or embedded in the metal at the point of manufacture.  

The tags are on display today at the ID World International Congress 2011 in Milan, Italy.  Find out more about the XS tags in our latest whitepaper “RFID Revolutionizing Healthcare with Smart Surgical Tools”.  Please contact a Xerafy sales representative at sales@xerafy.com to purchase XS tags in production quantities.