Radiation imagery chemistry: process – composition – or product th – Stripping process or element – Element
Reexamination Certificate
2001-12-21
2003-03-11
Schilling, Richard L. (Department: 1757)
Radiation imagery chemistry: process, composition, or product th
Stripping process or element
Element
C430S256000, C430S259000, C430S262000, C430S496000, C430S510000, C430S533000, C430S536000, C430S538000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06531258
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to packaging materials. In a preferred form it relates to the use of clear silver halide pressure sensitive labels for the printing of text, graphics, and images applied to packaging material.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Pressure sensitive labels applied are applied to packages to build brand awareness, show the contents of the package, convey a quality message regarding the contents of a package, and supply consumer information such as directions on product use, or an ingredient listing of the contents. Prior art packaging labels are typically ink printed utilizing flexography or gravure cylinders. The three types of information applied to a pressure sensitive label are text, graphic, and images. Some packages only require one type of information, while other packages require more than one type of information.
Prior art labels that are applied to packages consist of a pragmatic sheet material, a pressure sensitive adhesive, and a carrier sheet. The label substrate consisting of the pragmatic sheet, pressure sensitive adhesive, and carrier sheet are typically laminated and then printed utilizing a variety of nonphotographic printing methods. After printing, the labels are generally protected by an over laminate material or a protective coating. The completed label consisting of a protection layer, printed information, pragmatic sheet, pressure sensitive adhesive, and carrier sheet material is applied to packages utilizing high speed labeling equipment.
Clear labels are currently utilized in packaging to provide a “no label look”. Typically, prior art clear labels comprise flexo printed ink on a transparent polymer substrate. The transparent polymer substrate, when applied to the package, allows the native color of the package and contents of the package to visually interact with the printed inks. Clear labels are also useful in allowing the consumer to observe the contents of the package when used in combination with clear packages such as clear water bottles and glass beverage bottles.
Flexography is an offset letterpress technique where the printing plates are made from rubber or photopolymers. The printing on pressure sensitive label is accomplished by the transfer of ink from the raised surface of the printing plate to the surface of the material being printed. The rotogravure method of printing uses a print cylinder with thousands of tiny cells which are below the surface of the printing cylinder. The ink is transferred from the cells when the print cylinder is brought into contact with the pressure sensitive label at the impression roll. Printing inks for flexography or rotogravure include solvent based inks, water based inks, and radiation cured inks. While rotogravure and flexography printing do provide acceptable image quality for most current applications, these two printing methods require expensive and time-consuming preparation of print cylinders or printing plates which make printing jobs of less than 100,000 units expensive. Setup cost and the cost of the cylinders or printing plates is typically depreciated over the size of the print job.
Recently, digital printing has become a viable method for the printing of information on packages. The term “digital printing” refers to the electronic digital characters or electronic digital images that can be printed by an electronic output device capable of translating digital information. The two main digital printing technologies are inkjet and electrophotography.
The introduction of piezo impulse drop-on-demand (DOD) and thermal DOD inkjet printers in the early 1980's provided inkjet printing systems. These early printers were very slow, and the ink jet nozzles often clogged. In the 1990's Hewlett Packard introduced the first monochrome inkjet printer, and, shortly thereafter the introduction of color, wide format ink jet printers enabled businesses to enter the graphic arts market. Today a number of different inkjet technologies are being used for packaging, desktop, industrial, commercial, photographic, and textile applications.
In piezo technology, a piezo crystal is electrically stimulated to create pressure waves, which eject ink from the ink chamber. The ink can be electrically charged and deflected in a potential field, allowing the different characters to be created. More recent developments have introduced DOD multiple jets that utilize conductive piezo ceramic material which, when charged, increases the pressure in the channel and forces a drop of ink from the end of the nozzle. This allows for very small droplets of ink to form and be delivered at high speed at very high resolution, approximately 1,000 dpi printing.
Until recently, the use of color pigments in jet inks was uncommon. However, this is changing rapidly. Submicron pigments were developed in Japan for ink jet applications. Use of pigments allows for more temperature resistant inks required for thermal ink jet printers and laminations. Pigmented water-based jet inks are commercially available, and UV-curable jet inks are in development. Pigmented inks have greater lightfastness and water-resistance.
Digital ink jet printing has the potential to revolutionize the printing industry by making short-run, color print jobs more economical. However, the next commercial stage will require significant improvements in ink jet technology; the major hurdle remaining is to improve print speed. Part of this problem is the limitation of the amount of data the printer can handle rapidly. The more complex the design, the slower the printing process. Right now they are about 10 times slower than comparable digital electrostatic printers.
Electrophotography was invented in the 1930's by Chester Carlson.
By the early 1970's, the development of an electrophotographic color copier was being investigated by many companies. The technology for producing color copiers was already in place, but the market was not. It would take many more years until customer demand for color copies would create the necessary incentive to develop suitable electrostatic color copiers. By the late 1970's a few companies were using fax machines that could scan a document, reduce the images to electronic signals, send them out over the telephone wire and, using another fax machine, retrieve the electronic signals and print the original image using heat-sensitive papers to produce a printed copy.
In 1993 Indigo and Xeikon introduced commercial digital printing machines targeted on short-run markets that were dominated by sheet-fed lithographic printers. Elimination of intermediate steps associated with negatives and plates used in offset printing provides faster turnaround and better customer service. These digital presses share some of the characteristics of traditional xerography but use very specialized inks. Unlike inks for conventional photocopiers, these inks are made with very small particle size components in the range of 1 &mgr;m. Dry toners used in xerography are typically 8-10 &mgr;m in size.
In 1995 Indigo introduced the Ominus press designed for printing flexible packaging products. The Ominus uses a digital offset color process called One Shot Color that has six colors. A key improvement has been the use of a special white Electro ink for transparent substrates. The Ominus web-fed digital printing system allows printing of various substrates using an offset cylinder that transfers the color image to the substrate. In principle, this allows perfect register regardless of the substrate being printed; paper, film, and metal can be printed by this process. This digital printing system is based on an electrophotographic process where the electrostatic image is created on the surface of a photoconductor by first charging the photoconductor by charge corona and exposing the photoconductive surface to a light source in image fashion.
The charged electrostatic latent image is then developed using ink containing an opposite charge to that on the image. This part of the process is similar to that of electrostatic toners asso
Bourdelais Robert P.
Rieger John B.
Wideman David C.
Eastman Kodak Company
Leipold Paul A.
Schilling Richard L.
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