Armored-RFID Tag Loves to Get Hammered
Reprinted from RFID Journal
A new steel-shrouded UHF EPC Gen 2 tag, developed by Technologies ROI, can be welded to metal pipes or tools for the oil and gas, construction or other heavy industrial sectors, and is built to sustain abuse.
By Claire Swedberg
June 29, 2010—When a supervisor at a British firm that manufactures offshore oil-drilling rigs received a new RFID tag to attach to pipes and other steel equipment, he sent an employee out behind the building to try to break it. In fact, he offered the man ₤5 if he could destroy the tag in three swings of a sledgehammer. The world of RFID tags in the heavy industrial, oil and gas, and construction industries is all about endurance. A tag must be rugged enough to withstand heavy blows, abrasion, extreme temperatures, high pressure, and immersion in water and harsh chemicals—and still be able to transmit its ID number to an RFID reader.
The tag being savaged by the oil-rig manufacturer was designed by Technologies ROI (TROI). The Dome Cable Tag, as it is named, is encased in rubber—and, in fact, the supervisor never had to pay up on the wager. The rig-maker's employee placed the tag on a rock, then took the sledgehammer by its three-foot-long handle, raised it over his shoulder and swung the tool down so that its steel head, which weighed nearly six pounds, landed squarely on the tag. After three such blows, the tag remained undamaged, according to Patrick King, TROI's founder and president, who says he was on-hand for the experiment and watched the hammer pummel his tag. When the worker rotated the handle so that the tag would be hit by the sharp edge of the hammer's head, instead of its face, that was the tag's undoing, King says, noting, "It took more than a few swings, essentially chopping at the tag like you would cut down a tree."
