Stock material or miscellaneous articles – Ink jet stock for printing – Retransferable
Reexamination Certificate
1999-01-21
2003-11-25
Schwartz, Pamela R. (Department: 1774)
Stock material or miscellaneous articles
Ink jet stock for printing
Retransferable
C428S032260, C428S032360, C428S032380, C347S105000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06652928
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image-transfer medium suitable for use in forming an image on a transfer-printing medium by transfer-printing, a process for producing a transferred image using this image-transfer medium, and a cloth with a transferred image formed thereon, and more particularly to an image-transfer medium for ink-jet printing, in which an ink-jet printing system is used for forming an image on a transfer layer making up the image-transfer medium, a process for producing a transferred image by using such an image-transfer medium to transfer-print an image on a transfer-printing medium, thereby forming the transferred image, and a cloth with a transferred image formed thereon.
2. Related Background Art
As ink-jet printing systems, there are known various ink ejection systems, for example, an electrostatic attraction system, a system in which a piezoelectric element is used to give an ink mechanical vibration or change, and a system in which an ink is heated to form bubbles in the ink, thereby using the pressure thus produced. Printing is conducted by generating and ejecting minute droplets of an ink by one of these ink ejection systems and applying parts or all of the droplets to a recording medium. Such an ink-jet printing system is desirable because it is a simple system which produces little noise and can conduct high-speed printing and color printing. In recent years, ink-jet printers making good use of such a system, by which color printing can be simply conducted, have been widely adopted.
In recent years, the ink-jet printers, by which color printing can be simply conducted as described above, have been adopted, and there has thus been an increasing demand for conducting color printing on various recording media using these printers. In order to meet such a demand, particular attention is paid to printing techniques making good use of an image-transfer medium (image-transfer paper) in that printing can be conducted irrespective of the form of recording media (transfer-printing media), namely, image formation can be performed on any medium which does not permit direct printing by a printer.
Some image-transfer media making good use of an ink-jet printing system to form an image thereon have been proposed to date. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-207426 has proposed an ink-jet printing sheet in which an ink-receiving layer is composed of a thermoplastic resin, a crystalline plasticizer and a tackifier, thereby permitting sticking a transferred image to a transfer-printing medium by heating alone. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 8-207450 has proposed an image-transfer medium in the form of a sheet capable of permitting ink-jet printing and heat transfer printing, comprising a base material layer and a heat transfer layer which is composed of a particulate thermoplastic resin, inorganic porous fine particles and a binder. U.S. Pat. No. 5,501,902 has proposed an image-transfer medium for ink-jet comprising a transfer layer of a structure that a cationic resin, an ink-viscosity adjuster and the like are added in addition to the above-described components.
These image-transfer media according to the prior art have sufficient performance as to formation of an image thereon by ink-jet printing and transfer printing of the image therefrom to transfer-printing media. However, the performance as to fastness properties of the transferred images after the transfer to the transfer-printing media has not been said to be sufficient. More specifically, when washing a cloth to which an image has been transferred from such an image-transfer medium, there has been a problem that the optical density of the image is deteriorated because dyes forming the image and materials of the transfer layer carrying the image run out into water, that the transfer layer falls out due to rubbing when washed, or that the surface of the cloth having the transferred image is fuzzy. In order to solve such a problem, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 10-16382 has proposed an image-transfer medium in the form of a sheet, comprising a base material, a releasing layer and a transfer layer, wherein a crosslinking agent is added into the transfer layer to crosslink and insolubilize a water-soluble resin used as a binder making up the transfer layer, thereby preventing dyes from running out upon washing or the like. However, even the use of this technique has not been able to achieve satisfactory fastness properties when a transfer-printing medium with a transferred image formed thereon using such an image-transfer medium is washed numerous times by means of a washing machine.
On the other hand, it is considered that, when the transfer layer is so constituted that a thermoplastic resin and a heat-crosslinking resin are contained in a transfer layer in advance, and first the thermoplastic resin in the transfer layer is melted at the time of transfer printing, to penetrate the melt into interstices in a transfer-printing medium and then the resin making up the transfer layer by the heat-crosslinking resin is crosslinked, or the crosslinking resin is allowed to be reacted with the transfer-printing medium, the transfer layer can be cured in a state firmly fixed to the transfer-printing medium, whereby the fall-off of the transfer layer by rubbing and the fuzzing at the surface of the cloth can be prevented to provide an image-transferred article having excellent fastness to washing. However, this constitution involves a problem that when the resulting image-transfer medium is stored for several days, the transferability of the medium is impaired during the storage to fail to transfer the transfer layer to a transfer-printing medium though the above excellent effect can be achieved right after the production of the image-transfer medium.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of the present invention to provide an image-transfer medium by which an image formed thereon making good use of an ink-jet printing method can be transferred to a transfer-printing medium such as a cloth to form a good transferred image, and particularly to provide an image-transfer medium for ink-jet printing, which has a high ink absorbency, permits the formation of an image high in optical density and clearness, can form a transferred image having high fastness to washing when the image is transferred to a transfer-printing medium and has excellent shelf stability in itself to always permit the simple and stable formation of a satisfactory transferred image on a transfer-printing medium such as a cloth, a production process of a transferred image having such properties as described above, and a cloth with a transferred image formed thereon.
The above object can be achieved by the present invention described below.
According to the present invention, there is thus provided an image-transfer medium for ink-jet printing, comprising a base material, and a releasing layer and a transfer layer, both provided on the base material, wherein the transfer layer comprises fine particles of a water-insoluble thermoplastic resin, a water-insoluble thermoplastic resin binder and a crosslinking agent coated with a thermoplastic resin.
According to the present invention, there is also provided an image-transfer recording medium for ink-jet printing, comprising a base material, a releasing layer and a transfer layer, both provided on the base material, wherein the transfer layer comprises fine particles of a water-insoluble thermoplastic resin, a water-insoluble thermoplastic resin binder and a crosslinking agent, and is constituted by at least two layers, namely, a layer containing the crosslinking agent and a layer containing no crosslinking agent, and the crosslinking agent-containing layer is substantially free of any material reactive to the crosslinking agent.
According to the present invention, there is further provided a process for producing a transferred image, comprising the steps of forming an image on the transfer layer of any of the image-transfer
Higuma Masahiko
Kobayashi Motokazu
Sato Yuko
Shino Yoshiyuki
Canon Kabushiki Kaisha
Fitzpatrick ,Cella, Harper & Scinto
Schwartz Pamela R.
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