Lenses For Mail Scanners & Sorting Machines

Lenses For Mail Scanners & Sorting Machines

You may have thought it was a miracle if you have ever witnessed a mailroom at work. The U.S. Postal Service receives a staggering number of packages. The sheer volume of packages that the U.S. It is not uncommon to find incomplete addresses, or handwriting that is illegible. How do postal workers sort this much mail? How do they decide where to send packages with unreadable markings?

Lenses For Mail Scanners

Scanners are the answer to most of these questions.

How Does a Mail Scanner Work?

Sorting the mail was a laborious task in the past, but not anymore. Poster workers have a difficult job. The scanner and optical technologies have made the job easier.

Modern sorting machines are used to sort nearly all mail. These machines are equipped with highly advanced optical lenses that use barcode scanners, and other images. Using optical character recognition, these document scanners are able to accurately sort parcels near-instantaneously. This sorting process requires minimal manual labor. The delivery person is responsible for safely delivering the package to its destination after the scanner has completed its task.

What happens if these scanners are unable to read an address or a label? Again, the solution relies on a different type of optical scan.

Illegible Document Scanner

The parcel cannot be automatically sorted if the scanner is unable to read the handwriting or if part of the address has been removed. Instead of rejecting a package outright the scanner creates a picture of the document including the illegible label.

The image is sent to a specialist office for reading digital images. This process is less automated but still uses some advanced software. In this office, a specialist will examine the label to determine if it contains any letters or numbers.

Then they enter these characters in their sorting software. They determine the correct location using any deductions they have available. The parcel’s origin point could provide them with geographical clues. They may use the process of elimination or a combination of both to fill in missing letters on the label.

This process can be completed in a few seconds if done correctly. This is a combination of human deductive skills and technological innovation. Machine vision systems and image-processing devices produce highly accurate, reliable digital copies of document labels. The trained eye of a human is then used to analyze and return the digital copies.

Barcode Scanners, OCR Systems, and More

Usually Lenses for Mail Scanners, OCR Systems and Sorting Devices are three examples of how optical technologies are employed. Optical Character Recognition can be used for security, maintenance and transcription.

Contact us if you need custom image lenses to fit scanners and similar devices. SUPERIOR® Optics is a leader in the design of custom lenses for medical, scientific and technical applications.