Manufacturing tray with customized inlays for processing different types of articles of manufacture
View Patent ↗A manufacturing tray for imprinting custom content onto different articles of manufacture includes a tray base and frame, and a plurality of interchangeable different customized inlays for holding different types of articles of manufacture. Each tray includes an identifier which may be associated with a custom processing job for instructing the imprinting system which of a plurality of available pre-treatment, post-treatment, and imprinting processes to perform.
1. A manufacturing tray system for processing in a manufacturing system of different types of articles of manufacture, comprising:
a tray base configured to interface with a conveyance system for transport through the manufacturing system;
inlays;
an interchangeable tray inlay supported by said tray base, and arranged to hold an article of manufacture;
a tray identifier associated with processing information corresponding to the tray and to the article of manufacture, the processing information being indicative of a process to be performed by the manufacturing system.
2. The tray system of claim 1 , wherein the tray inlay is configured to hold a plurality of articles of manufacture, and the tray identifier is associated with the plurality of articles of manufacture.
3. The tray system of claim 1 , wherein the tray inlay is configured to hold at least two different types of articles of manufacture.
4. The tray system of claim 1 , comprising one or more position identifiers associated with respective positions of each article of manufacture loadable in the tray inlay.
5. The tray system of claim 1 , wherein each position identifier is further associated with corresponding individual print content associated with a respective individual article of manufacture.
6. The tray system of claim 1 , wherein the tray inlay is configured to hold each article of manufacture such that a target print area on the article of manufacture is held at a predetermined height relative to the tray base.
7. The tray system of claim 1 , wherein the tray identifier comprises a Radio-Frequency Identifier (RFID) tag.
8. The tray system of claim 1 , wherein the identifier comprises a barcode.
9. The tray system of claim 1 , wherein the tray identifier is uniquely identifiable from one or more additional trays interfacable with the transport system.