A high capacity packaging machine for TL Dosimeters automated sealing, labelling and assigning of TLD-Cards

For more than 20 years the Department of Radiation Protection of the Austrian Research Centre Seibersdorf has been operating a Thermoluminscent Dosimetry (TLD) Personnel Monitoring Service. At the moment our Service monitors approximately 20,000 radiation workers in Austria. Our service has been operating on two Harshaw 8800 systems for more than 8 years now. With the installation of the two 8800 systems and an expansion of the activites of the Service, a more sophisticated approach towards handling and registration of the outgoing and incoming TLDs became mandatory. An important part of the strategic planning both with respect to improved quality control procedures and economy was an automated packaging, labelling and machine. The details of this packaging machine (PM) are described in the paper. The packaging machine has been in full operation at Seibersdorf for four years. Minor adjustments of the original design have boosted performance in the packaging phase to almost full output (19,000 TLDs and ~ 1,000 extra TLDs) within one 8 hour working day, wheras previously additional labour had to be added to the work force to accomplish the same work within 3 to 4 days.