A new high density magnetic bar code system

Magnetic bar codes can be used in dirty environments instead of optical bar codes or as invisible codes in order to enhance the security of prepaid cards. In this article, we propose a high density magnetic bar code system in which the existence or nonexistence of a bar element is detected by a magnetic bridge. A micro head constituting a magnetic bridge is fabricated with thin amorphous cores and thin copper wire coils. The magnetic bar elements are printed with magnetic ink. The basic characteristics, such as signal separation from neighboring bar elements, are discussed in terms of the element width and the space between two adjacent elements.