Custom Sensors CCD Scanners
Part 1 - Hand Held CCD Scanners

Hand-held CCD scanners have challanged hand-held laser scanners in the Point of Sale applications for many years. Now that CCDs have increased in sensitivity and can be clocked at 2 MHz. rates, or higher, fixed mount CCDs are chalenging fixed mount lasers in industrial applications. This FAQs designed to present information that will help you choose between the two for a particular application.

What are the Advantages of Fixed Mount CCD Scanners over Fixed Mount Laser Scanners?

• CCD Scanners have no moving parts. Lasers have either rotating or oscillating mirrors that are subject to wear and mechanical failure.
• CCD Scanners use LEDs for illumination. LEDs have about ten times the life of laser diodes. Their illumination level is safe for direct viewing, so safety precautions are not necessary.
• CCD Scanners are generally smaller and less expensive than laser scanners.
• CCD Scanners have scan rates of 500 scans per second, so they can be used to scan barcodes on rapidly moving objects, providing the code is in the preferred orientation (See Note 1)
• CCD scanners can be positioned close to the barcode; some almost in contact. This is useful where space to install the scanner is limited.
• Laser scanners are approaching the small package size of the CCD units, but the separation distance between the code and the scanner must be greater than with a CCD Unit. Therefore, the installation occupies more space.

What are the advantages that Fixed Mount Laser Scanners have over CCD Scanners?

• Laser Scanners can be located much further from the barcode, and also read over a wider distance range than CCD scanner. CCD scanners are limited to read ranges of a few inches, where some laser scanners can operate a few feet away from the code.
• Laser scanners can read longer barcodes than CCDs. Many CCD scanners can only read barcodes with lengths of three inches, or less.
• Laser scanners will still be required on some high speed applications because they can attain scan speeds of 2000 scans per second, or higher.

Note 1. CCD Scanners can read barcodes passing the scanner a speeds of 200 inches per second, or faster, depending on the characteristics of the individual barcode. To accomplish this the code must be moving past the scanner in a direction parallel to the length of the bars. If codes are moving in in the opposite direction, code speed is limited to around 5 inches per second. Again, this speed is determined by the characteristics of the individual code. See the illustration below.

Custom Sensors CCD Scanners