Balloons and wrapping materials

Amusement devices: toys – Convertible from – or serving as diverse article

Reexamination Certificate

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Details

C446S220000, C206S459500

Reexamination Certificate

active

06663455

ABSTRACT:

The present invention relates to foil balloons and wrapping materials, a printing kit, a method of manufacturing a balloon, a method of pre-treating a surface prior to printing and a method of imprinting a design onto foil balloons or foil or other wrapping materials.
Some wrapping materials in current use are in the form of plastics foils, such as polyesters, polyamides and polycarbonates, or coated paper. Balloons may also be fabricated from plastics foils. The materials may have a metallic appearance, such as those made from aluminised nylon foil extrusion-coated with polyethylene. Balloons manufactured by Anagram International Inc., of Minneapolis, Minn. 55344-7307, U.S.A. use this type of material. These balloons are marketed in many shapes and sizes. Alternatively, the material may simply be an opaque or transparent glossy plastics material and may be non-metallised. These plastic materials are referred to herein as “foil”.
Foil suffers from the problem of not being able to receive printed images when using conventional ink-jet or bubble-et printers. Images printed or drawn onto balloons or wrapping paper made from foil have a tendency of being either non-permanent or non-effective due to the ink not actually marking the material.
Balloons and wrapping paper made from foil are known which have had images permanently imprinted thereon at the time of manufacture. For example, foil balloons are manufactured in many different designs and are often supplied with greetings, such as “Happy Birthday”, with an image form, e.g. Walt Disney, or with corporate logos printed thereon. However, the design is applied at the factory, either at the stage of making the foil or at a later stage by a printer, using silk-screen, flexographic or other printing techniques, and the process is not suitable for making one-off balloon designs due to the tooling-up cost for each design imprinted upon the foil and the need to stock a quantity of balloons bearing each design. It would be desirable to address this problem to allow commercial production of one-off or low-volume runs of specific personalised messages or images, including photographs, onto foil balloons or wrapping materials.
It would not be feasible to use a photocopier to print images on foil balloons or wrapping materials, since the foil could melt, or at least distort, when subjected to the high temperatures encountered in a photocopier.
Equally, foil will not readily accept writing from non-permanent writing implements. Attempts using an ink-jet printer have not worked, because the image thereby produced does not permanently dry onto the surface of the foil, and the image smudges instantly upon being touched.
It would therefore be desirable to provide a foil which can readily be marked by both permanent and non-permanent writing implements. It would further be desirable to provide a foil balloon and a foil wrapping material that can readily be marked by both permanent and non-permanent writing implements.
A disadvantage displayed by aluminised foil balloons is that the aluminium contained in the material renders the balloons visible to microwave radiation used in radar and as such the United Kingdom's Civil Aviation Authority prohibits their use for balloon release purposes or as high-level static display devices. It would therefore be desirable to provide a foil balloon of substantially clear or coloured construction of any desired size, that contains a printable area and which has the benefit of being transparent to microwave radiation. Such a balloon could allow for large-scale foil balloon releases and would be suitable for large static display advertisements.
A first aspect of the present invention provides a foil, at least part of the surface of which is adapted to be marked readily such that designs and the like may be printed onto the adapted surface of the foil. A single-sided coated foil can be used to create a balloon that has a receptive print area on both sides of the balloon.
The surfaces of both faces of the foil may be so adapted to be marked such that a respective design may be imprinted on each face of the foil.
Preferably, the adapted surface comprises a water-soluble or water-based coating. The coating may be an absorbent coating for absorbing ink. Such coatings are referred to in the trade as inkjet lacquers. By way of example, inkjet lacquers are already commonly applied to ink-jet printer transparencies, such as those produced by 3M, Xerox and Esselte, producing photographic-type imaging. Such coatings can be applied commercially by the following companies: Sensitisers (Research) Ltd., Sensitisers Industrial Coating Research, 1 Blackdown Road, Deepcut, CAMBERLEY, Surrey, GU16 6SH, UK; Tekra Advanced Technologies Group, 16700 West Lincoln Avenue, New Berln, Wis. 53151, USA; and Microseal Industries Inc., 610 East Street, Paterson, N.J., 07509-3054, USA. These inkjet lacquers are based on aqueous polyvinyl alcohols and the acrylic family of chemicals, with varying compositions to provide the required drying times, absorbency, weight and/or any other desirable characteristic.
The coating is additionally preferably substantially transparent so as to retain the colour of the underlying surface of the foil. Alternatively, the coating may impart a colour to the underlying surface. The coating may additionally impart a scent to the surface, or a scent may be added afterwards, as the coating is preferably absorbent to perfume, etc. and will retain it while packaged in an air tight manner for long periods prior to opening.
Preferred materials for the coating are those which are particularly insensitive to finger contact.
The foil may be a sheet of wrapping paper, or it may be a part of a balloon. In the latter case, the thickness and the density of the coating are preferably so low as not substantially to add weight to the balloon, such that it can still rise effectively when inflated with a suitable gas of low density.
Additionally, when the foil forms a balloon, the surface which is adapted to be marked may be the inner surface of the balloon, such that a design applied to the balloon is thereby better protected. In this case, the design is preferably printed in its mirror image.
The adapted surface, when forming at least part of a balloon, allows ink, whether liquid, dry or toner-based, to be applied to the surface of the balloon either in an inflated state or prior to inflation of the balloon. For example, ink may be applied to the surface of the balloon by a hand-held inkjet, such as those used in egg farms, or by a standard desk-top inkjet printer.
A layer of substantially opaque ink may be applied to the foil in addition to the ink for the design, thereby enabling the design to be applied to a transparent foil. This additional layer may conveniently be applied by means of an inkjet printer, and may be applied by the same printer as used for the application of the design.
When applying a design onto the inner surface of a balloon, the layer of substantially opaque ink is desirably applied to the foil after the application of the ink for the design, so that the opaque ink serves to enhance the visibility of the design.
The substantially opaque ink is preferably white, but alternatively may be coloured, so as to impart a background colour to the design.
Balloons, prior to inflation, or wrapping materials, according to the present invention, may be formed in, or folded into, a substantially rectangular sheet-like shape, thereby being adapted to feed through a conventional inkjet printer. To assist in this, the balloon or sheet may be wrapped around a relatively rigid former, or substrate, for example a rectangular sheet of card or any fine film. Such a substrate may advantageously be provided with a layer of light adhesive so as to retain the balloon or sheet in position during printing but which will enable the balloon or sheet to be released readily from the substrate. In this case, it will be appreciated, that, although only part of one side of the balloon appears on one side of the rectangular sheet, it woul

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