Capris 50-300 Specifications

• The Capris 50-300 is a system for marking and processing thin wires and cables for the aircraft industry. The company that make it is Spectrum Technologies. The 50-300 is the base model, with an advanced 50-300ES system on the market that is 30 to 60 percent more efficient than the base version. The machines use UV lasers to mark the wires instead of the traditional hot stamp technology or shrink-wrapping sleeves onto the wire.

Performance

• The 50-300 can mark up to 100 feet of wire in a minute, depending on the amount of characters and spaces to be marked. On average, the system marks 65 to 80 feet of wire per minute for commercial applications, but the system is slightly slower when the digits are continuous, such as in military applications. On a typical shift, according to the manufacturers, the machine marks 10,000 feet of wire or more.

Laser

• The laser is a Class 1 laser that can be used on an open shop floor. The laser is in the ultraviolet range at 355 nanometers. It conforms with European CE standardization.

Printing

• The laser marker can cope with 100 characters per identification mark with 50 characters, including all letters, numbers from zero to nine, a blank and several other characters which include a dollar sign, geometric shapes and a percentage sign.

  Lower-case printing is possible and there are four font sizes, ranging from the small 0.047 by 0.024-inch characters to the largest 0.063 by 0.047-inch characters. The font changes automatically with wire size. Customized character sets can also be fitted to the machine.

  The manufacturer states that the location accuracy of the printing to the length of the wire is plus or minus half a percent.

Wire Capabilities

• The wire range that can be used in the 50-300 is from 26 American Wire Gauge (AWG) to 6 AWG. The minimum wire length that can be used is 6 inches and the maximum is arbitrarily set at 10,000 inches. The type of wire should be tape wrapped polyimide wires.

Motor

• The wire is fed and controlled by a low tension servo motor drive with a motor-powered de-reeler. The machine also has a laser-driven knot and splice detection system.

Control System

• The machine is controlled by a Windows PC system with Capris-specific software. Data can be entered using a keyboard, a floppy disc or from an Internet connection. The machine also has a barcode reader for reading wire reel identification markings.