Burr Tag Tests at Corpus Christi Army Depot

During the months of May and June 2002, the Corpus Christi Army Depot (CCAD) conducted harsh industrial process survivability tests of burr tags. Burr Tags are made of stainless steel and marked with product information to provide temporary identity for disassembled parts during rework processing. At the end of this rework processing or as the parts are assembled to their next higher level assembly, the burr tags are removed and discarded. Traditionally, CCAD has embossed human readable, raised characters on burr tags by use of a semi-automatic metal stamping press that employs preformed character (male and female) dies that are manually typeset by the machine operator. The strategy of the current burr tag enhancement study is to retain the human readable features and add machine readable, bar code symbology to allow shop users to scan and input part data to update computer automated, production tracking systems. The tags are typically attached by wire ties to the part undergoing processing.