Each year Tip-on feeders and card fixing systems become a more important part of the mailing and fulfillment industry. With gift cards, credit cards, and membership cards being sent through the mail (or even, in some cases, sold directly at point-of-sale), they’re increasingly a service that senders don’t they can afford to NOT offer to their customers. … including credit card connection systems, which use smart tip feeders to ensure each card is correctly connected to the correct carrier (both contain personal and sensitive information).
Throughout the development of such systems, they have been so expensive that only a small number of mailing companies and commercial printers could afford to offer card-attaching services. More recently, a large part of the cost (incline feeders) has been reduced by the introduction of innovative incline feeding systems: the Straight Shooter SA-5 and SA-12 Attachment Feeders.
The Straight Shooter SA-5 is an inexpensive card feeder. You can add to your existing tip-on machine or integrate it as part of a completely new system. Its small size allows you to fit it into another card accessory, such as the Pitney Bowes – Surefeed AT-2, GaVehren, DataCard, or Kirk Rudy. This allows you to convert your “single card” suggestion in the system to a system that can apply multiple cards. When using these feeders, we see some pretty powerful benefits over other systems, including:
- Servo Drive for precise placement.
- A PLC control that is easy to use for feeder configuration.
- The possibility of applying TWO CARDS to a carrier. One can be placed immediately below the other.
- It takes up little space, allowing it to fit into an existing Tip-On unit.
- Available in 5″ wide format or 12″ wide format.
The heart of any card fixing system is the card feeder. You must precisely place a card in exactly the same location on each carrier, as they travel under the card feeder. Therefore, a complete system essentially consists of a transport base and feeder, a gluing system and the card feeder. The glue system will drop a “dot” of glue onto the holder and the SA-5 feeder will place the card in each holder at a precise location.
Both the SA-5 and SA-12 did a remarkable job, hitting their targets without fail at speeds of up to 25,000 units per hour. This is amazing accuracy (only 1/8″ variance) at some very high speeds. The feeder is rugged but small and easily fits into a wide variety of existing systems.
In general, SA tilt feeders performed well in tests, withstood high levels of use, and caused no or no line problems. It’s something that we at Addresser Based Systems would highly recommend.
