JP3074931B2 - Information fabric and method of manufacturing the same - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to an information cloth in which visual information such as characters, images, marks or identification marks, information tools and the like are printed on the cloth, and a method for manufacturing the information cloth.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art When recording an information tool such as a character, an image, or an identification mark on a cloth, if a recording method is selected in consideration of good washing resistance and friction resistance, a conventional recording method is used. The main method was a method using so-called printing using a dye or a pigment.

[0003] However, this printing method is very inflexible to image changes, and it is necessary to newly produce original plates, for example, when printing a serial number whose number changes each time it is recorded. In addition, it is not an exaggeration to say that if information fabrics are to be produced in small quantities and with many types, they will not be usable at all. Of course, it is not possible to meet the demand for printing and immediate use.

[0004] As one of the methods for improving the above flexibility and immediate use (quick delivery), a dyeing method using an ink jet printer using a special ink is conceivable. Is starting to be. However, since the liquid ink is used, bleeding occurs when printing on a fabric that has not been subjected to any processing, and a clear image cannot be obtained. Therefore, it is necessary to perform a bleeding prevention treatment on the fabric before printing, or a cleaning step for removing excess dye is required after image formation, which not only complicates the manufacturing process but also increases the cost. There was a point.

On the other hand, the development of printer technology related to OA equipment has been remarkable, and in recent years, in addition to high image quality, unprecedented intermediate colors and subtle hues (natural hues such as human skin hues and metal textures) have been developed. A sublimation-type thermal transfer printer has been developed, characterized in that it can be expressed by changing the dyeing concentration according to the amount of heat energy to be applied. However, as a recording medium, in order to obtain sufficient image density and sharpness, together with how to smooth the surface layer,
It was essential to use special paper provided with a porous polyester resin layer or the like as a surface layer. Therefore, it has not even been considered to apply the technique to a fabric having an uneven surface morphology. Even if it is attempted to develop on Yoshiba fabric, the smoothness of the fabric surface is much lower than that of paper, so the transfer efficiency is very poor, and it can be said that printing or forming an image is almost completely impossible. could not.

[0006] For this reason, as a method of forming an image on a cloth, paper, a dye,
After an image is formed on a sheet such as a film, the image forming sheet and a cloth as a recording medium are overlapped, and the image formed on the sheet is temporarily re-transferred to the cloth using a means such as a hot press. The current situation was forced to do so.

[0007]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the present invention to provide a method for recording visual information such as characters, images, and marks on a cloth, and information tools such as characters, images, and identification marks. Using a sublimation-type thermal transfer method that was not a technique, the problem of lack of versatility and quick delivery for image changes as pointed out above, and also the problem of color development expected as it was used in fabrics It is an object of the present invention to provide an information cloth capable of directly and timely applying information recording to the cloth with good coloring properties and clearness by clearing, and a method of manufacturing the same.

[0008]

According to the above-mentioned object,
As a result of intensive studies, in the combination of the sublimation type thermal transfer method and the fabric made of fibers having fine pores or irregular irregularities on the surface, a particularly remarkable effect was found, and quick delivery, diversification, individualization of the fabric, and As a printing technique aimed at an identification cloth, the present inventors have arrived at the information fabric of the present invention and the method for producing the same by paying attention to the surface area of the fabric at the molecular level.

The outline is as follows.

That is, the information fabric of the present invention is a woven fabric, a knitted fabric or a non-woven fabric mainly composed of fibers having fine pores or irregular irregularities having a size in the range of 0.001 to several μm on the fiber surface. An information cloth characterized by recording visual information such as characters, images, or marks on a knitted or nonwoven fabric with a sublimation dye.

That is, or alternatively, the present invention relates to a woven or knitted fabric or a nonwoven fabric mainly composed of fibers having fine pores or irregular irregularities having a size in the range of 0.001 to several μm on the surface of the woven fabric. An information cloth characterized in that an information tool such as a character, an image, or an identification mark is recorded on a knitted or nonwoven fabric by a sublimation dye.

Further, the method for producing an information cloth according to the present invention is characterized in that a sublimation type woven or knitted or non-woven fabric mainly composed of fibers having fine pores or irregular irregularities having a size in the range of 0.001 to several μm on the surface of the fiber is produced. This is a method for manufacturing an information cloth, characterized by directly recording visual information or information tools such as characters, images and marks using a thermal transfer printer.

The information cloth referred to in the present invention is visual information such as characters, images, or marks, or information tools such as characters, images, or identification marks that can be recognized as meaningful by humans or machines. Refers to a woven or knitted or non-woven fabric that has been made.

Here, the “visual information” in the present invention means:
Visually appealing information such as characters, images, or marks, for example, trademarks, service marks, house marks, trade names, characters that display characters, images (pictures), one-point marks, brand marks, marks or characters that display organizations , Patterns, quality markings, handling markings, etc.
It means that marks, designs, patterns, etc. are given. These are, of course, provided from the viewpoint of increasing the design and product value, and from the practical viewpoints such as the above-mentioned quality indication, handling method indication, dimensional indication, and owner / company name indication. This includes those that are present.

The identification mark referred to in the present invention mainly includes a bar code, a two-dimensional code, and an OCR (Optical Chord).
aracter Recognition), and the standard is not particularly limited as long as it can be read visually or optically by an arbitrary reading device or the like corresponding thereto. In addition, the “information tool” in the present invention is a simple pattern, a pattern given to a fabric only from the viewpoint of aesthetics in design (design),
It is a tool that allows a person who wants to obtain some information instead of characters or the like to obtain the recorded information from the cloth by some means.

In the present invention, the woven fabric, knitted fabric or non-woven fabric may be in the form of a fabric, or may be subjected to secondary processing to provide clothing such as a shirt, bedding, accessories, and the like. This includes those that are processed into various fiber products such as personal belongings. Also, the size, color, etc. of characters and marks are not limited.

[0017]

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described in detail.

In the sublimation type thermal transfer method, a dye having a high sublimation property is used. Also, considering that the surface layer of many existing recording papers is made of a porous polyester-based resin, it is apparent that a cloth, In particular, it seems that the compatibility with the polyester-based fabric is high. However, conventional fabrics have poorer smoothness than paper and the like, have significantly poor transfer efficiency, cannot form images to the extent that they can be said at all, and were not considered to be applied to printing on fabrics. However, even if an attempt is made, the single-filament fineness of the fibers constituting the fabric is large, so that the surface area of the fabric at the molecular level is small, the dyeing amount is reduced, and the color developability is extremely poor. It was inevitable that the combination would be incompatible.

The present invention is characterized by using a woven fabric, a knitted fabric or a nonwoven fabric mainly composed of fibers having fine holes or irregular irregularities on the surface as a recording medium in order to solve such a problem. Particularly in the present invention,
Preferably, a fiber having a substantially continuous microporous structure having a specific surface area of 0.4 m ² / g or more, more preferably a porosity of 5 to 70% is preferable. By using such a fiber cloth, the surface area of the cloth surface, in particular, the surface area of the cloth at the molecular level becomes much larger than that of the conventional cloth, so that the dyeing amount of the sublimation dye can be greatly increased, and This can provide information such as good characters, images, or identification marks.

It is preferable to improve the adhesion to the transfer film of the sublimation-type thermal transfer printer in order to obtain a clearer image and the like. From this viewpoint, it is needless to say that it is preferable to further improve the smoothness of the surface of the recording medium. From such a viewpoint, a fabric having fine pores or irregular asperities on the fiber surface and having a single fiber fineness of mainly 0.0001 denier or more and 1 denier or less is much smoother than a normal cloth. It is very preferable from that point because it has excellent properties. In particular, the ultrafine fibers are preferably made of two kinds of fibers, polyamide fibers and polyester fibers, and the finely mixed fabric is preferable because it has a dense surface, and thus a surface excellent in smoothness. . It is also a preferable method to apply a high-speed fluid flow treatment (water jet punch) to the surface of the fabric to open and / or entangle the ultrafine fibers to densify the surface. By such treatment, the shape stability of the fabric is also significantly improved. Furthermore, calendering is also preferable because it leads to improvement in surface smoothness and dimensional stability due to entanglement of fibers.

It is important that the fiber used in the present invention has fine pores or irregular irregularities on its surface.
Such micropores refer to micropores having a size in the range of 0.001 to several μm, and are continuous not only on the fiber surface but also substantially inside the fiber, and the porosity of the fiber is 5 to 70%. Those are particularly preferred because they can increase the dye adsorption speed and can obtain a high dyeing amount. Here, the porosity is determined from the apparent density and the true density of the fiber by the porosity (%) = (1−apparent density (g / cm ³ ) / true density (g / cm ³ )) × 100. Can be.

Further, not only fine holes, that is, concave portions, but also so-called concave and convex shapes in which convex portions are mixed may be used, but it is more preferable that finer concave and convex portions are formed in the concave and convex portions.

The specific surface area of the fiber is 0.4 m
^It is more preferably at least ² / g, most preferably at least 1.5 m ² / g. Here, the specific surface area means a surface area per 1 g of a fiber having fine pores or irregularities, and can be measured by a so-called BET (Bunauer-Emmet-Teller) method.

As a method for producing ultrafine fibers, various conventionally known techniques for producing ultrafine fibers can be used as they are.

The cross-sectional shape of the fiber is not limited to a circle, but may be any of triangles, squares, ellipses, polygons, and the like. Rather, an elliptical shape having a large flattening ratio, a rectangular cross-sectional shape, and the like have better surface smoothness when compared with the same single fiber fineness, and can be said to be more preferable shapes.

When the cloth is made of a woven fabric or a knitted fabric, the number of the constituent yarns of the warp and the weft, the number of the constituent fibers and the density are important factors for obtaining the effect of the present invention. It is preferable that the product of the weaving density or the knitting density of the warp and the weft is 1,000 yarns / cm ² or more. In particular, by satisfying these figures,
The dyeing efficiency of the dye sublimated from the transfer film of the sublimation type thermal transfer printer to the woven or knitted fabric is very good,
It is possible to obtain an extremely practical optical density and sharpness of a pattern boundary of an image or the like.

Similarly, it is preferable that the nonwoven fabric also has a very dense and as flat a surface structure as possible. Specifically, the present invention is not necessarily limited to this. According to apparent density 0.15
g / cm ³ or more is preferable.
An ordinary spun-bonded nonwoven fabric or a short-fiber nonwoven fabric further subjected to calendering, or a water-jet punched one can be suitably used. Here, the apparent density according to the present invention is a value represented by the following equation.

Apparent density (g / cm ³ ) = weight (g / c)
m ² ) / thickness (cm) The above-mentioned sublimation type thermal transfer printer generally refers to a printer which is controlled and input from an external computer or the like when printing information tools such as characters, images, and identification marks. However, in addition to such a function as a so-called printer, the sublimation-type thermal transfer printer has an optical reading device for an image or the like, and edits or processes the image or the like read by the reading device as it is. It is also preferable to have a function capable of printing by the printer unit. By having such a function, an arbitrary image or the like can be easily printed on the cloth, and by using the editing function together, the original image can be subjected to various processing and then printed. Furthermore, it is preferable not only to use only one type of dye but also to use a plurality of types of dyes to make a printed image multi-colored or full-colored.

[0029]

The present invention will be described in more detail with reference to the following examples. It should be noted that the validity and scope of the rights of the present invention are not limited or limited thereby.

Example PET-containing 5% by weight of sodium alkylsulfonate was used as an island, and 5-isodium sulfoisophthalic acid copolymerized polyester was used in the sea. 10 filaments). Thereafter, weaving was performed on a high-density taffeta having a weaving density of 140 yarns / inch × 110 yarns / inch. Next, after performing an acid pretreatment, the sea component was dissolved and removed with an alkali solution to make it ultrafine, and the fiber surface was roughened. Then, on the fabric,
After the water jet punch treatment, a calender treatment was performed to obtain a dense and smooth fabric. This fabric was backed with a thick polyester film, filled in a commercially available sublimation type thermal transfer printer, and printed.

As a result, an extremely clear image was recorded. As a comparison, the same operation was performed on a conventional polyester fabric made of a fiber having a single fiber fineness of 3 deniers. As a result, almost no image was obtained. On the other hand, in the case of ultrafine fibers having the same fineness and not having a roughened surface, only a thin image was obtained.

[0032]

As described above, according to the present invention, it is possible to record a clear image on a cloth using a sublimation-type thermal transfer printer that is flexible with respect to changes in the image and the like, Can be used.

Continuation of front page (56) References JP-A-2-145840 (JP, A) JP-A-7-166465 (JP, A) JP-A-53-41586 (JP, A) JP-A-50-18782 (JP, A) JP-A-3-49991 (JP, A) JP-A-2-111586 (JP, A) JP-A-3-185173 (JP, A) JP-A-4-7688 (JP, A) (58) Field surveyed (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) D06C 3/00-29/00 D06H 1/00-7/24 D06P 1/00-7/00 D03D 1/00-27/18 D04H 1/00- 18/00 D01F 1/00-6/96 D06M 11/00-11/84 B41M 3/00-5/40 G06K 9/00-9/82

Claims (6)

(57) [Claims] 1. A fiber having a size of 0.001 to several μm on a fiber surface.
A woven or knitted or non-woven fabric mainly composed of surrounding micropores or fibers having irregular asperities, wherein visual information such as characters, images or marks is recorded on the woven or knitted or non-woven fabric by a sublimation dye. An information cloth characterized by the following. 2. A range of 0.001 to several μm in size on the fiber surface.
A woven or knitted or non-woven fabric mainly composed of surrounding micropores or fibers having irregular asperities, wherein information tools such as characters, images or identification marks are recorded on the woven or knitted or non-woven fabric by a sublimation dye. An information cloth characterized by the above. 3. The information cloth according to claim 1, wherein the information cloth is made of fibers having a specific surface area of 0.4 m ² / g or more. 4. The information fabric according to claim 1, wherein the information fabric is mainly a fabric having substantially continuous microporous fibers having a porosity of 5 to 70%. 5. A fiber having a size of 0.001 to several μm on the fiber surface.
Using a sublimation-type thermal transfer printer to directly record visual information or information tools such as characters, images, or marks on a woven or knitted fabric or a nonwoven fabric mainly composed of fibers having micropores or irregular asperities. Manufacturing method of information cloth. 6. A sublimation-type thermal transfer printer having an optical reading device for an image or the like, and capable of printing an image or the like read by the reading device as it is or by editing and processing the image or the like by a printer unit. The method for producing an information fabric according to claim 5, wherein a material having a function is used.