SPEC 2000 Led by the Air Transport Association, Spec 2000 is a specification of standard formats for the exchange of information between airlines and their suppliers. Click here to find out more about how Pryor can help with component traceabiity, part marking and identification. Turbine Blades One of the world's biggest manufacturers of aircraft engines commissioned Pryor to design and manufacture a complete marking process for integration into their turbine blade production. Pryor designed and manufactured two fully automated marking systems. Before machining, blades are marked with a machine readable DMT code (developed by the customer) using Pryor's own dot-marking technology. The code is then automatically verified and the customer's database updated. The code is used at several stages throughout the manufacturing process to control the machining processes automatically. Finished blades are passed through the second station which decodes the DMT code, generates and marks human readable text and finally uses optical character verification (OCV) to guarantee the mark quality. 2D coding is well suited to marking turbine blades. Key features are Small code area allows large amount of data to be marked in a small area. Is decoded automatically using vision based technology.   Example of the 2D DMT Code used Aircraft Tyres Aircraft tyres must be permanently identified so that airline operators (including military customers) can track a tyre through it's service life to meet with legal requirements. Service life for aircraft tyres can also include up to 8 re-treading processes to extend lifetime. Existing technology such as barcode labels and printing have proved unsuitable. Labels and printed codes are too easily damaged in use; human readable codes are subject to human transcription errors. The solution uses a moulded barcode, known as "Bumpy Bar Code". During manufacture the bumpy bar codes are formed in the tyre wall. The code is read using a portable hand held scanner and the reading process is achieved in zero contrast conditions. Bumpy bar-codes can be marked directly into a range of engineering materials using Pryor Marking Systems providing all the benefits of machine readable bar codes in engineering environments.