Mb Associates

Harry G Heard

Terence S Dowling

Robert J Dompe

Keith K Hazard

A laser-excited marking system wherein a laser beam is used to mark information on an article. A laser beam from a laser is directed onto a scanner unit which includes positionable mirrors for reflecting the laser beam onto the article. The positionable mirrors are positioned in accordance with control signals from a controller to reflect the laser beam in two dimensions. Information consisting of alphanumeric and symbolic characters is provided as an input to the controller. The controller includes a general purpose computer which is programmed to develop control signals for the scanner unit whereby the character information input to the controller is marked by the reflected laser beam on the article. Stored within the computer is a listing containing a two-dimensional dot matrix representation of each alphanumeric and symbolic character, each such dot matrix being referred to as a character matrix. The computer generates a two-dimensional label matrix corresponding to the information to be marked on the article and composed of individual character matrices. The computer scans the entire two-dimensional label matrix for the occurrence of dots. Whenever a dot is encountered, the controller supplies control signals to the scanner unit to position the positionable mirrors in positions corresponding to the location of the dot in the matrix. The controller then pulses the laser whereby a mark is made on the article at a location corresponding to the location of the dot in the label matrix. The scanning and marking is continued in this manner until the entire label matrix has been scanned.

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Woodside, CA, United States of America

Harry G Heard