Because a hospital is concerned with two major things, saving lives and doing it in as sanitary a fashion as possible, it is one of the most difficult markets to make products for. The pressure is one when it comes to the manufacturing of surgical tools. Also, because of the craziness of the hospital environment, all of the tools that doctors and nurses utilize must be thoroughly and correctly identified. This can be done be varieties of marking machinery, all of which are able to imprint materials that have been shaped into a finished product with a series of number, dots or letters to identify them. The medical field values this for many reasons.

First of all, using the right surgical tool is vital for a doctor or surgeon, whether in the confines of a preplanned surgical room or the craziness of an ER bed. Therefore, each instrument must be clearly identified not only with its own unique number but a general tag that identifies it as a certain type of product. Having a unique number is used for internal traceability, a necessary management of all the products in a hospital for sterilization and organizational reasons. These are all specific to the medical industry, although marking machinery are also used by most manufacturing companies for tracking purposes and making questions, tracking and fixing mistakes in a product easier.

The mechanics of marking machinery varies depending on the material being marked and the environment within which it is being marked. Laser marking equipment is environmentally friendly and very precise with complicated images, although it can not be incorporated into a production line like the dot preen machine because it requires a protected space to be used. The dot preen machine is pneumatically powered and often run by a CNC system, making it a popular choice for manufacturing companies with simple codes they are imprinting. These are just a few examples of the many marking machines available today for the medical field and all others that require product identification.