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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Great Idea-GHS Tags For Small Packages

Delta Kits (www.deltakits.com) windshield repair and headlight restoration products are used by over 10,000 customers in more than 75 countries.  Their industry leading tools, resins, and equipment are preferred by professional windshield repair and headlight restoration technicians worldwide and are highly respected for quality, durability, and ease of use. The Delta Kits team of award winning windshield repair experts has almost 70 years combined experience as educators, technicians, and leaders in the industry — setting a standard of excellence for auto glass repair.

GHS Label
DELTA Kits Example GHS Label

As with most companies in the chemical and adhesive industries, Delta Kits needed to comply with the international Global Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) requirements, implemented in the United States by OSHA (https://www.osha.gov/dsg/hazcom/ghs.html) with the deadline date of June, 2015 (December, 2015 for distributors) https://www.osha.gov/dsg/hazcom/HCSFactsheet.htmlDavid Patterson, Warehouse Manager, for Delta Kits contacted us after a referral from one of our other customers.

One of the label needs David had was to meet dual language requirements for GHS in Canada especially on small bottles:  http://www.deltakits.com/shopping/resins/product/87-30290-premium-pit-resin-7-ml-plastic-bottle or syringes http://www.deltakits.com/shopping/resins/product/81-30003-magnibond-resin-one-shot-applicator-pkg-of-5.   Based on this requirement, David asked, “Does the TM-C3500 printer have the ability to print on card stock like bottle neckers?” David had the idea of placing slits in a necker to enable the tag to slip over a bottle or around a syringe.  Here is his first draft design of a 4” x 1.5” necker.

GHS Tag

David’s idea was to use the neckar to add more area for information to meet the GHS requirements for small containers.  Plus, he could use the neckars as a means to print in dual languages for shipping; that would make it easy to remove once the product arrived in country.  This idea sounded perfect for many of our customers with small containers.

Based on David’s question, my response was, “Yes; however, it needs to be inkjet coated stock.  If you send me exactly the dimensions (and volumes) of your tag, I can get you a quote.  Once you get the TM-C3500 printer, you can try your existing stock.  But more than likely it will not work as thermal transfer card stock is coated; preventing the ink from drying.  If you have a plain paper tag stock, it may work; but the ink may spread slightly.”

Based on our discussion, David decided to purchase durable 8 mil poly tags with this initial design:

GHS Tags
GHS Tag Design
We decided to place slits in the hole; and leave the chad.  We needed to leave the chad as the C3500 uses a vacuum to hold the paper to the printhead.  With a hole, the printer could produce bad print quality or will not work.

When David received the tags, they printed; but not great.   According to David, “I ran a few tests on the tags. The print did not look so good. I shut off the air to the area of the hole by closing the shutters on the inside of the front door of the printer. It helped a little but still did print as well as our labels. Printing came out blurred.“

GHS Bottle Tags
GHS Bottle Tags


According to David, the blurred print was worse using a PDF.  Based on the feedback, we decided the hole was causing the issue; especially given the stiffer matte poly; and opted to try a softer, more conformable material.


Once produced, David again tried this material but found a different issue.  The tag would not read the black mark and skipped tags; or would not read the blackmark at all.

GHS Bottle Tags
GHS Bottle Tags

With the new feedback, the plant went to work to determine what was causing the issue.  It was soon discovered that the tags would work, no problem, if the tags were rewound in the opposite direction.



 
And now Dave is printing GHS tags that look great!

GHS Tags
GHS Tags


David Patterson of Delta Kits had a great idea to solve the issue of adding a lot of information to labels for very small containers. If you have small bottles or syringes that need to meet the GHS requirements, contact us about using tags or neckars to provide more real estate for information.  We can help.

Guy Mikel
855-962-7670

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

"Sticky" Path To GHS Labels

For 130 years, Adhesives Products, Inc. (API), http://www.adhesiveproductsinc.com/,  has produced high quality products for the adhesive industry including many types of glues, adhesives, tapes, labels and coatings.  Since 1878, the mission of API remains today to be a highly responsive manufacturer, selling quality products to their customers.



Like all companies selling adhesives, API needed to comply with the GHS requirements prior to June 1, 2015.  By this date, Color Label Solutions had 45 posts covering GHS.  Our first post from February 2012 covers Oakwood Products and their effort to meet the GHS Requirements: http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/02/un-drives-print-on-demand-color-label.htmlOther early posts included Octochem:  http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/02/chemistry-opportunity.html and GHS in general; http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/03/what-h-is-ghs-opportunity.html as well as BS5609: http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2012/03/bs5609-is-no-bs.html.


Adhesive Products Inc.
Jeff Vinuya in the API warehouse
According to Jeff Vinuya, Laboratory Director, API, “we reached Epson after contacting several other companies involved in selling GHS solutions.  It seems all of the other companies wanted us to spend tens of thousands of dollars for software to produce the Safety Data Sheets (SDS) and then the GHS Labels.  We did not want to spend this amount of money.  What we needed was to print labels that met the GHS requirements.  When Epson connected us to Color Label Solutions, they assured us this reseller would help us with printing GHS labels.  And they have!”


Adhesive Products Inc. Label
Prior API Label
Prior to producing GHS labels, API used preprinted labels in which the hand wrote the product and other information on the label.  Jeff says, “Handwriting labels takes valuable time, opens up opportunities for mistakes and does not look the best.  As a part of moving to GHS labels, we wanted a way to eliminate the hand writing of labels.”

Based on the requirement to produce drum labels and add data to labels at print time, we recommended BarTender.  Based on this recommendation, Jeff visited our post on creating drum labels; including downloading the example template and database we provided.  You can see this post here:  http://colorlabelsondemand.blogspot.com/2014/09/ghs-drum-label-template-database.html.

 Based on our discussion, Adhesive Products purchased C831 printers for both their CA and WA locations as well as BarTender.  With this software, Jeff created great looking labels, even for their pails.

API GHS Label
API GHS Label
And fiber drums produced in their WA location:

API GHS Label
API GHS Label

Also, Jeff was able to eliminate the requirement to add information by hand.  Now the shipping manager can print, apply and ship product without using a pen!

API Label Printing
For their labels, Jeff is using matte paper.  As they don’t ship internationally via marine, they don’t need to meet the BS5609 requirements.  Even so, Jeff has found our paper labels to be relatively durable.

It’s great to work with customers like Jeff and API.  They understood their requirements, and made decisions decisively.  Now they have a GHS label solution that works well for them.

If you need a GHS solution or a better option than you are currently using, contact us here at Color Label Solutions.  We’ll make sure your path forward quickly and easily and not "sticky" just like API.

Guy Mikel
855-962-7670
#colorlabels