Say it ain't so...........

[ROY DICK]

http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=81143

Roy

[Darren Null]

That's a contract to bid for...

[Dan Hintz]

I saw this a couple of days ago.. there's rumor this is a joke.

[Tim Bateson]

Sounds a bit flaky.

[Christopher Scoggin]

I want to believe it is a fake but I turned up this from the official Kellogg UK site:

http://www.kelloggs.co.uk/whatson/pr...ts-fake-flakes

Still there is something about the tech jargon they use in the press release that still sounds off to me. :-/

[Michael Hunter]

It gets pretty boring doing a 12x24" sheet of Laserlights labels.
Now imagine doing hundreds of thousands of cornflakes!

[Gordon Kircher]

Flaky....hmmmm....a little more corny for me.

[Rob Bosworth]

They will probably use something like a TEA laser marking system. Basically they sweep a raw beam over masks and leave the image. Many products are marked in high speed application using a TEA laser and masks. The metal mask allows energy to go through the holes in the mask, and the rest of the beam is reflected or absorbed in the mask material. They can mark the flakes as fast as they can pulse the laser.

Another fun laser application is the way cigarette manufactures cut the holes in cigarette papers for low tar smokes. They fly the paper by on a line (web). The paper is traveling at tremendous speeds and pass under a number of "Christmas trees" that are spinning. These "Christmas trees" are a whole bunch of corner mirrors and optics that look somewhat like a Christmas tree when the are sitting still. Everything is spinning and rotating, and they shoot lasers into these assemblies. The beams shoot down onto the flying paper in little ovals, which look to be perfect circles because the paper is traveling along the web at a certain speed. These holes in the paper allow air to be pulled into the cigarette when someone puffs on it, allowing less smoke and the good stuff to enter the lungs during a puff. I have seen a couple of these lines, where they have stacks of 1000 watt lasers shooting into stacks of Christmas trees. They sure can punch a lot of holes in paper at a pretty good clip.

[Dan Hintz]

Originally Posted by Rob Bosworth

They will probably use something like a TEA laser marking system. Basically they sweep a raw beam over masks and leave the image. Many products are marked in high speed application using a TEA laser and masks. The metal mask allows energy to go through the holes in the mask, and the rest of the beam is reflected or absorbed in the mask material. They can mark the flakes as fast as they can pulse the laser.

According to Kelloggs, they're using a galvo system.

[Lee DeRaud]

Reading between the lines in the Kellogg link, it looks like they're only going to mark a small percentage of the flakes, just enough to insure that every box has a few marked ones.

The whole laser-marking thing isn't nearly as eyebrow-raising as the underlying concept: "counterfeit cornflakes".

[Bill Cunningham]

Well, look on the bright side, they ain't substituting tofu for flakes yet..

[Lee DeRaud]

Originally Posted by Bill Cunningham

Well, look on the bright side, they ain't substituting tofu for flakes yet..

What? Like I needed another reason not to eat cornflakes?!?

[Mark Ross]

Then there is the whole two scoops in every box of raisin bran, but they don't tell you the size of the scoop and I am pretty sure they have cheapened that up too.

Cornflakes are good with a sliced banana and a whole cup of sugar...

[Albert Nix]

Mask and color fill lol.

[Lee DeRaud]

Originally Posted by Mark Ross

Cornflakes are good with a sliced banana and a whole cup of sugar...

Bananas and sugar are just fine without any substrate, thank you very much.