A Complete Guide on ITF Barcodes

Over the years, hundreds of barcodes have been developed. Each type of barcode has been created to serve a particular purpose in different industries. One such type of barcode is the ITF barcode or Interleaved Two of Five Barcode. In general, it has the standard structure of a barcode.

The ITF barcode is a type of barcode that is commonly used on corrugated fiberboards, which are utilized to make boxes. Within the ITF barcode, many types of barcodes exist. Each barcode consists of two wide bars out of five bars. Also, each ITF barcode is different from the other, but the structure is alike.

The Various Types of ITF Barcodes

There are many types of ITF barcodes. These types are explained below.

Industrial ITF Barcode

Initially, when ITF barcodes were developed, they were used for industrial purposes. As time passed and the technology evolved, the use of ITF barcodes expanded to many more sectors. Also, information is only stored on the bars of the barcodes. Therefore, the spaces between the bars are free from any information. As such, this significantly increases the size of the code.

Matrix ITF Barcode

The need to increase the storage capacity of the industrial ITF barcode led to the development of the matrix ITF barcode. Unlike the industrial ITF barcodes, the matrix ITF barcodes store information within the bars and the spaces between each bar. Doing this significantly increased the amount of information that is stored in the barcode.

COOP ITF Barcode

The COOP (a consumer cooperative) ITF barcode is another type of barcode. It is mostly used by cooperative organizations.

IATF ITF Barcode

IATF stands for International Air Transport Association. As the name implies, this type of barcode is used in the air industry. In particular, it is utilized for managing and categorizing cargo packages, which are transported to various locations. Therefore, it is utilized by most of the major airlines that are involved in cargo.

The Structure of ITF Barcodes

The ITF barcodes consist of 5 bars or spaces, which stand for a character. As a result, bars represent characters. Also, spaces represent characters. Therefore, characters within bars are interspersed alternately with characters within spaces. This means that the first and the second characters are represented by five bars and five spaces, respectively. The structure of the ITF barcodes makes them have even digits. Also, the fact that both bars and spaces store data, ITF barcodes can store a lot of information. However, unlike other barcodes, the ITF barcode does not have a start or an end character. Nonetheless, start and end are represented using bar patterns.

The Downside of ITF Barcodes

Although ITF barcodes are very useful, they do have some disadvantages. This type of barcode has one major problem. The structure of an ITF barcode makes it easy for skipping to occur while reading information. This means that certain characters may not always be read by a scanner. This problem can slow down work. As a result, the scanner must face the barcode directly to ensure that every character is read.

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