Doubled Orion circles on polymer notes

News: Welcome to the Canadian Paper Money Forum.

This topic was originally started in the Trading Post section...

www.cdnpapermoney.com/forum/index.php?topic=13609

I am interested in the research aspects of this topic, hence a new thread on this board.

I looked through a small quantity of $20 polymer series notes and found no less than three that had doubling of some of the Orion circles to the right of the holographic window on the face.  There are 14 circles, and I took the liberty of numbering them as shown in the first photo below.

Here are the notes:

{http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/5029/qtxu.jpg:http://img821.imageshack.us/img821/5029/qtxu.th.jpg}

BIK 2982154 86/86

Circles 1, 2, and 3 look pretty normal.  All the others show doubling.


{http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/3475/08yq.jpg:http://img541.imageshack.us/img541/3475/08yq.th.jpg}

BIV 3410064 76/76

Circles 7, 8, and 9 show a bit of doubling.  Circles 12 and 13 appear to have something too, but it's very faint.


BIP 2177866 58/58

(not shown)

Doubling on circles 8 and 9 is hard too see.


If anyone else is looking for these types of errors and wants to report them below, your contributions are quite welcome.

Is Orion an official name for these circles? It seems like they are universal part of banknote design.

A scholarly paper I read referred to them simply as rings. There was a suggestion in the paper that these rings are used to measure banknote printing quality through machine processing.

Anyone interested can find the paper here

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1707163


I have  also read somewhere that it is these circles that alert the hardware and software not to process the images during copying/scanning.

I don't know if you want to consider changing the title to doubling or you think it might be worth starting another thread after you see the following image:

{http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/8168/qtwq.jpg:http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/8168/qtwq.th.jpg}

I believe they are more properly called Eurion circles.  While these certainly play a role in the overall anti-counterfeiting efforts, that is not the only thing that scanners, copiers and software look for when checking to determine whether or not the image before them is a banknote.

I wrote an article on the subject of these circles in the March 2005 issue of the CPMS Newsletter.

How's this for some doubling on Orion circles 2, 3, and 4?...

{http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/6342/ca4p.jpg:http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/6342/ca4p.th.jpg}

FIL 9452562 23/23

How's this for some doubling on Orion circles 2, 3, and 4?...

The FIL has a strong offset which makes it interesting but your BIK has many of them doubled.

Looks like you are running  into them frequently.

Any other locations with doubling i.e. back bottom? front left of window?, any other denomination?

So far you have both the printers so I am wondering if it has something to do with that specific ink?

I showed this to someone who is into printing and they could not believe that BoC has released these types of notes. Even in run of the mill printing this type of doubling calls for rejection and if it happens frequently it calls for an investigation.

Personally I have been cataloging many registration issues in Canadian banknotes and am happy to see that someone else on this forum has research interests into something other than just fancy numbers.

After looking at all those fancy numbers commanding such high prices I started seeing double circles

Thx for sharing.

BIW 3487593 - 77 - 77 - 4, 5, 6, 7 - DOUBLING OFFSET UPWARDS - LIGHT - 6 BEING THE STRONGEST

BSC 9281145 - 84 - 84 - 3, 6 - DOUBLING OFFSET UPWARDS - LIGHT - 3 BEING THE STRONGEST

Looking at your pics, I am surprised that you did not comment on the amount of detail in the ribon to the left.

Your FIL and BIV are the same but the BIK is missing alot of detail comparatively.

Personally I am watching to see a crossover to all the leaves being made into maple leaves.