Chapter 4
Scanners and Scanning Technique
Wands
Matching your wand to your bar code type
The WDP Reader comes with a low, medium or high-resolution bar code wand, or a medium-resolution wand specially designed to read through plastic or glass, depending on your application. The number and letters on your wand's cable identify its resolution and the type of light it uses -- visible red or infrared (invisible):
• 10 | MILRED | Low-resolution visible-light |
• 8 | MILRED | Medium-resolution visible-light |
• 6 | MILRED | High-resolution visible-light |
• 6 | MILIR | High-resolution infrared-light |
These are the five types of wands and their associated characteristics:
Low-resolution visible-light wand
This is a low-resolution visible-red LED wand designed specifically for dot-matrix printed bar codes. It reads any low or medium-resolution bar code printed by any technology, but can't easily read high density codes.
Medium-resolution visible-light wand
A versatile, general-purpose medium-resolution visible-red LED wand which reads well-printed dot-matrix bar codes and high-density codes up to 10 cpi for Code 39. It reads well-printed dot-matrix codes with the same high read rate as the low- resolution wand. With poorly-printed codes, however, the low-resolution wand significantly outperforms it.
Refocused medium-resolution infrared-light wand
This is a medium-resolution infrared (invisible) light wand designed to read through plastic or glass 1/100" (.025 mm) to 1/4" (6.35 mm) thick. This is especially useful for applications such as reading compact disks with the bar codes under the cases. Bar codes must be printed with infrared-quality ink. Bar codes printed on thermal printers (not thermal-transferprinters) are often unreadable to infrared light wands. There is an additional charge of $60 for this wand.
High-resolution visible-light wand
This is a high-resolution visible red light wand designed to read high-density bar codes up to 13 cpi for Code 39. It can also read any well-printed dot-matrix or other lower-density codes, providing there are no voids (white spots in the bars) in the codes.
High-resolution infrared-light wand
This high-resolution infrared-light wand is designed to read high-density bar codes up to 13 cpi for Code 39. It also reads well-printed dot-matrix or other lower-density codes, providing they're printed with infrared-quality ink (bar codes printed on thermal printers are often unreadable to infrared scanners) and don't have any voids (white spots in the bars).
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