Patent ID: 6802454
Filing Date: 2004-10-12
Classification: G06K

Abstract:
An apparatus, comprising:a body having an axis of rotation; a serial number laser etched on the body, the serial number appearing on the body in a symmetrically arcuate array about the axis in both human-readable and machine readable forms, the serial number having a plurality of order characters and a plurality of unique characters; a plurality of two dimensional array codes on the body, each encoding a portion of the serial number such that the entire serial number is encoded on the body; wherein a first one of the array codes encodes a first one of the order charters, a second one of the array codes encodes a second one of the order characters, a third one of the array codes encodes a third one of the order characters, and the unique characters are sequentially divided among and encoded by the array codes following said ones of the order characters; and wherein the human-readable form of the serial number appears in a first order, and the machine-readable form of the serial number appears in an order different from the first order.