JP3225281B2 - Activation method of transfer ink - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a liquid pressure transfer in which, for example, a transfer film in which a transfer ink is previously applied to a water-soluble film is supplied to a transfer tank, and then the transfer ink is transferred to a transfer target by a liquid pressure of a liquid. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method for activating a transfer ink which is once dried and in a solid state, is again provided with adhesiveness, and is in a transferable state.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Conventionally, in the field of so-called curved surface printing, in which a pattern such as wood grain or marble is printed on a three-dimensional surface having a complicated curved surface, a technique using hydraulic transfer has been used. That is, in this method, a transfer film coated with transfer ink is supplied with the transfer ink side up on a liquid surface in a transfer tank storing a liquid such as water, and the transfer film is brought into contact with the transfer film. The transfer object is pressed against the transfer ink surface of the transfer film and is immersed in the liquid, and the transfer pattern formed by the transfer ink is transferred to the surface of the transfer object using the liquid pressure generated thereby. It is.

In such a transfer method using a liquid pressure, it is necessary to impart adhesiveness to a transfer ink for forming a transfer pattern of a transfer film before transfer so that the transfer ink can be transferred. "Activation" means that the transfer ink is brought into such a state.) In activating the transfer ink to such a state in which the transfer ink can be transferred, depending on the timing of the activation. Generally, there are the following two methods.

That is, the first method is to activate the transfer ink of the transfer film before the transfer film is supplied onto the liquid surface in the transfer tank and comes into contact with water.
This method is also employed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. HEI 4-122667, entitled "Hydraulic Transfer Method and Apparatus", which has already been filed by the present applicant, and a transfer film having relatively high extensibility is used. In some cases, it has an advantage that it can follow a complicated curved surface shape or a relatively large curved surface.

[0005] A second method is to activate the transfer ink after the transfer film is supplied on the liquid surface in the transfer tank, comes into contact with water, and becomes swollen. In the second method, since a transfer film having relatively small extensibility is used, there is an advantage that a printed pattern appears sharply.

[0006]

In the first method of the two conventional methods, a means for activating the transfer ink is, for example, a method in which a rectangular concave portion is formed on the peripheral surface in a dot shape. It is common to apply an activator by a roller coater using a large number of gravure rolls. For this reason, in this activator application, there is a problem that the density of the activator is caused by the eyes of the gravure roll used in the activator or the gravure eyes appear as a pattern on the transferred product.

On the other hand, when the object to be transferred is planar,
If the second method is used, the advantage that the pattern to be printed appears sharply is a close-up point, but in that case, the transfer film is in a floating state on the liquid surface in the transfer tank. After the activator is applied, the roller coater using the gravure roll cannot be used because of the mechanism, and the activator is applied by a spray gun using a manual or automatic machine.

For this reason, in the second method, the occurrence of the gravure eyes can be prevented. However, according to the application of the activator using a spray gun, a certain pressure is applied to the transfer film and the transfer film is applied. In some cases, wrinkles may be generated, resulting in poor transfer. In any of these conventional techniques, either the activation of the transfer ink or the contact of the transfer film with water is started earlier than the other, so that the timing for performing the activation and the contact with water is set. This is one of the problems in performing good transfer to an object to be transferred.

That is, in the first method, since the transfer film is activated before the contact with the water, the time required for the transfer film to come into contact with the water and reach the transfer position is determined by the transfer during the contact with the water. It is necessary to sufficiently consider the progress of the activation of the film, and ignoring this will lead to excessive activation. In the second method, on the contrary, since the transfer film is activated after contact with water, it is necessary to determine the transfer timing after sufficiently considering the progress of the swelling of the transfer film, and this is ignored. In that case, it will lead to excessive swelling. Further, in these methods, since the swelling zone and the activation zone are separately provided, there is also a problem that the process distance and the process time are correspondingly increased. The present invention has been made based on such a situation, and provides a new method of activating a transfer ink having a good transfer finish, and at the same time, generation of gravure eyes and transfer film wrinkles in the prior art. This is to eliminate transfer failure caused by the above.

[0010]

That is, a first invention of a method for activating a transfer ink according to the present invention is to provide a method for activating a transfer ink prior to forming a predetermined transfer pattern on the surface of an object to be transferred. In the method of imparting tackiness and activating the transferable state, the activation of the transfer ink is performed with respect to the transfer film at the stage before being fed out from the transfer film supply device and supplied to the transfer tank. And by activating the transfer ink, and activating the transfer ink is performed almost simultaneously with the contact of the water-soluble film, which is a transfer sheet for the transfer ink, with water. .

According to a second aspect of the transfer ink activation method of the present invention, in addition to the above requirements, an inclined surface is provided between the transfer film supply device and the transfer tank. The transfer film fed from the device is
While passing on this inclined surface, it is guided into the transfer tank,
The activation of the transfer ink is performed on the transfer film passing on the inclined surface.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method for activating a transfer ink, wherein a water outlet is provided on the inclined surface, and water flowing out from the water outlet is provided. Thereby, a water flow of a constant flow rate is formed on the upper surface of the inclined surface, and the transfer film fed from the transfer film supply device is supplied to the transfer tank according to the water flow of the upper surface of the inclined surface. I do.

[0013]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, the activation of the transfer ink is performed after the transfer ink is fed out from the transfer film supply device, and the transfer film in the previous stage supplied to the transfer tank is brought into contact with water. It is done almost simultaneously. Therefore, since the activation of the transfer ink and the swelling of the water-soluble film, which is the sheet carrying the transfer ink, due to the contact with water proceed almost simultaneously, the transfer timing can be set earlier than before, and the transfer timing can be easily adjusted. This leads to good transfer. And when activating the transfer film,
Since the activator is sprayed on the transfer film, there is no possibility that transfer failure due to gravure is caused.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, the activation of the transfer ink is performed on the transfer film passing on the inclined surface. Therefore, the transfer film receives the spray of the activator while being supported by the inclined surface. By this, when spraying the activator on the transfer film, the ripples of the water surface generated due to the spray pressure and the occurrence of wrinkles of the transfer film are suppressed, so the burden of consideration on the spray pressure of the activator is reduced, It is possible to select and use various types of sprayers.

According to the third aspect of the present invention, a water flow having a constant flow rate is formed on the inclined surface. Therefore, since the transfer film is guided into the transfer tank by this water flow, the swelling is started by making sure that only the water-soluble film on the back side of the transfer film comes into contact with water while assisting the supply of the transfer film to the transfer tank. Can be.

[0016]

DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A method for activating a transfer ink according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. In the description, a method of activating the transfer ink of the present invention will be described along with the outline and operation of the hydraulic transfer apparatus by taking a hydraulic transfer apparatus as an example. FIG. 1 schematically shows a hydraulic transfer device, wherein reference numeral 1 denotes a hydraulic transfer device, and reference numeral 2 denotes a transfer film.

The transfer film 2 has a support sheet made of a water-soluble film made of, for example, gelatin, sodium alginate, polyvinyl alcohol resin, etc., and has a binder component which can be transferred from the transfer film 2 swollen by water W on its surface. An ink surface 2a to which transfer ink having the following is applied is formed in advance, and a required transfer pattern to be transferred to the transfer object 8 is formed on the ink surface 2a.

The hydraulic transfer device 1 has a transfer tank 3, a transfer film supply device 4, and a transfer object supply device 5. The transfer tank 3 includes a processing tank 3a and an overflow tank 3b,
In this embodiment, water W is stored in the processing tank 3a,
After passing through the overflow tank 3b, the water W that has overflowed from the treatment tank 3a is gently returned to the treatment tank 3a by the pump 7 through the circulation line 6 in a state in which the liquid level is not wavy. Note that other liquids may be used in place of the water W as long as the liquid W can swell or dissolve the transfer sheet of the transfer film 2.

In the processing tank 3a of the transfer tank 3, the processing tank 3a
A pair of chains 13 wound around the sprockets 11 and 12 are disposed near the left and right side walls of the chain conveyor 15 to constitute a chain conveyor 15.
Are driven in the same direction on the upper liquid level circulation side to assist the transfer film 2 in advancing toward the overflow tank 3b.

The transfer film supply device 4 is provided with a film roll 17 on which the roll-shaped transfer film 2 is mounted.
And a heat roll 18. Then, the continuous transfer film 2 drawn from the film roll 17 is supplied to the water inlet A side of the transfer tank 3 through the tension roll 19 and the heat roll 18, and passes through the upper surface of an inclined surface 21 described later. The transfer film 2 pulled out from the film roll 17 has an ink surface 2a facing upward.

The transfer film supply device 4 continuously supplies the downstream end of the transfer film supply device 4 to the upstream end of the transfer tank 3 on the water inlet A side of the processing tank 3a. An inclined surface 21 for guiding the transfer film 2 to the liquid surface of the processing tank 3a is provided, and the transfer film 2 passing through the upper surface of the inclined surface 21 smoothly enters the liquid surface in the processing tank 3a by a gentle inclination. It has become.
This inclined surface 21 is formed in a flat plate shape or a gutter shape as in the embodiment shown in FIGS. 1 to 3, and the inclined surface 21 is curved in the width direction as shown in FIG.
In the transfer direction of the transfer film 2 on a flat plate under the same idea, or the like, which has shallow irregularities formed in the transfer direction of the water so as to give directionality to water flowing out from the water outlet 23 described later. A variety of shapes can be adopted, such as one having a plurality of grooves formed along.

A water tank 22 is provided on the lower surface of the inclined surface 21, and a water outlet 23 communicating with the water tank 22 is formed on the inclined surface 21.
The water outlet 23 is formed, for example, with a large number of small holes on the inclined surface 21.
(See FIG. 2).
In the water tank 22, a part of the water W returned from the overflow tank 3b via the circulation line 6 is supplied by a pump 25 through a supply line 24.

The water outlets 23 are provided only in one row in the width direction of the inclined surface 21 as shown in FIG. 3, and are arranged in three rows upstream, middle and downstream of the inclined surface 21 as shown in FIG. An outlet 23 may be provided so that the amount of water increases as going downstream. In this case, the water outlets 23 may be arranged in a line, may be arranged in a staggered manner, or may be arranged randomly without regularity. Further inclined surface 21
As shown in FIG. 4 (c), a plurality of thin tubes 21a can be joined in a plane, and in this case, a water outlet 23 is formed in the thin tubes 21a, and a supply line 24 is formed. Is connected to the thin tube 21a. The joining direction of the thin tubes 21a may be a direction along the transfer direction of the transfer film 2 as shown in FIG. 4C, or may be a direction orthogonal thereto. However, in this case,
Some kind of guide for preventing the water W from flowing to the side is required separately.

A flow regulating valve 26 is provided in the supply line 24 as an example, so that the amount of water discharged from the water outlet 23 of the inclined surface 21 and flowing down on the inclined surface 21 can be adjusted. ing. Accordingly, the transfer film 2 passing on the inclined surface 21 is supplied along the gentle inclination of the inclined surface 21 and smoothly on the liquid surface of the water inlet part A of the treatment tank 3a along an appropriate water flow flowing down the upper surface. And becomes a floating state.

Above such an inclined surface 21, the transfer ink is provided with adhesiveness toward the ink surface 2a of the transfer film 2 passing through the inclined surface 21 to activate the transfer ink so that the ink can be transferred. An activator dispersing device 9 for dispersing the activator is provided. The activator spraying device 9 has an activator tank 31, a sprayer 32, and a spray nozzle 33. The activator sprayed from the spray nozzle 33 is uniformly sprayed on the ink surface 2a of the transfer film 2. It has become. Incidentally, in this embodiment, since the transfer film 2 is supported by the inclined surface 21, the transfer film 2 does not wrinkle without any special consideration regarding the spray pressure of the active agent from the sprayer 32. Good transfer is possible.

The sprayer 32 is preferably a centrifugal or ultrasonic atomizer which sprays the activator by atomizing the activator and spraying the activator by its own sedimentation.
An ordinary spray gun type may be used, and the number of spray nozzles 33 and the number of nozzle ports are not limited to one, and a plurality of spray nozzles and nozzle ports may be provided.

Further, on the inclined surface 21, the transfer film 2 starts to swell due to the water W from the water outlet 23, and almost simultaneously with the activation of the transfer ink by spraying the activator from the activator spraying device 9. Since the transfer starts, the swelling of the transfer film 2 and the activation of the transfer ink on the ink surface 2a proceed almost simultaneously, so that the transfer timing can be set earlier and the transfer timing can be easily adjusted.

In the illustrated hydraulic transfer apparatus 1, the entire activator spraying device 9 is disposed above the inclined surface 21. However, the present invention is not limited to this, and only the spraying nozzle 33 or the spraying nozzle 3 is used.
It goes without saying that only the sprayer 3 and the sprayer 32 may be arranged above the inclined surface 21. Thus, the processing tank 3a
The transfer film 2 supplied on the surface of the liquid is then swelled and activated, and at the same time, is gently flowed on the surface of the liquid and transferred to the downstream side by the chain conveyor 15 to be transferred to the transfer target 6. It reaches the transfer section B where the transfer step is performed.

The transfer section B is located on the overflow tank 3b side of the processing tank 3a, and
Is provided above the processing tank 3a. The transfer object supply device 5 has a holder 36 for gripping the transfer object 8 on a conveyor 35, and continuously corresponds to the transfer speed of the transfer film 2 by a drive motor (not shown) as indicated by arrows in the drawing. It is driven in the direction.

Therefore, the transfer object supply device 5 holds the transfer object 8 with the ink surface 2a of the transfer film 2 while slightly holding the transfer object 8 below the liquid surface of the processing tank 3a while holding the transfer object 8 with the holder 36.
Then, the transfer surface of the transfer object 8 is pressed and brought into contact by liquid pressure, and the transfer to the transfer object 8 is performed by this contact. The transfer-receiving body 8 on which the transfer has been performed in this manner.
Is removed from the holder 36 of the transfer-medium supplying device 5 and then dried and top-coated to obtain a finished product.

As described above, in this embodiment, the activator is applied to the transfer film 2 by the activator spraying device 9, which is different from the conventional roller coater system. can do. In this embodiment, the transfer film 2 has a continuous sheet shape. However, the present invention is not limited to this. For example, the transfer film 2 may have a cut sheet shape.

[0032]

As described above, according to the first aspect of the present invention, the transfer ink is activated after the transfer ink is fed from the transfer film supply device 4 and before the transfer ink is supplied to the transfer tank 3. The transfer film 2 is almost simultaneously contacted with water. Therefore, since the activation of the transfer ink and the swelling of the water-soluble film, which is the sheet carrying the transfer ink, due to the contact with water proceed almost simultaneously, the transfer timing can be set earlier than before, and the transfer timing can be easily adjusted. This leads to good transfer. Since the activation of the transfer film 2 is performed by spraying the activator on the transfer film 2, there is no possibility that transfer failure due to gravure is generated.

According to the second aspect of the present invention, the activation of the transfer ink is performed on the transfer film 2 passing on the inclined surface 21. Therefore, the transfer film 2 is sprayed with the activator while being supported by the inclined surface 21. Thus, when the activator is sprayed on the transfer film 2, the ripples on the water surface and the occurrence of wrinkles on the transfer film 2 caused by the spray pressure are suppressed, so that the burden on the spray pressure of the activator is reduced. It is possible to select and use various types of sprayers.

Further, according to the third aspect of the present invention, a water flow having a constant flow rate is formed on the inclined surface 21. Therefore, the transfer film 2 is guided into the transfer tank 3 by this water flow, so that the supply of the transfer film 2 to the transfer tank 3 is assisted.
Swelling can be started by ensuring that only the water-soluble film on the back side of the transfer film 2 is in contact with water. By these effects acting synergistically, a very inexpensive and excellent transfer finish can be obtained, and a high-quality product can be realized.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a side view schematically showing a hydraulic transfer apparatus to which a transfer ink activating method of the present invention is applied.

FIG. 2 is an enlarged side view showing a portion where transfer ink is activated in the first embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a plan view of the same.

FIG. 4 is an explanatory view showing various embodiments in which the shape and configuration of the inclined surface or the arrangement of the water outlet are different.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1 Hydraulic transfer apparatus 2 Transfer film 2a Ink surface 3 Transfer tank 3a Processing tank 3b Overflow tank 4 Transfer film supply apparatus 5 Transfer object supply apparatus 6 Circulation line 7 Pump 8 Transfer object 9 Activator spraying apparatus 11 Sprocket 12 Sprocket DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 13 Chain 15 Chain conveyor 17 Film roll 18 Heat roll 19 Tension roll 21 Inclined surface 21a Small tube 22 Water tank 23 Water outlet 24 Supply line 25 Pump 26 Flow control valve 31 Activator tank 32 Sprayer 33 Spray nozzle 35 Conveyor 36 Holder A Water inlet B Transfer unit W Water

Continuation of the front page (58) Field surveyed (Int. Cl. ⁷ , DB name) B65C 9/00-9/20 B41F 16/00 B44C 1/165 B41M 3/12

Claims (3)

(57) [Claims] 1. A method for imparting tackiness to a transfer ink constituting a transfer pattern and activating the transfer ink in a transferable state prior to forming a predetermined transfer pattern on the surface of the transfer object, The activation is performed by spraying an activator on the transfer film after being fed out from the transfer film supply device and before being supplied to the transfer tank, and in activating the transfer ink, A method for activating a transfer ink, wherein the method is performed almost simultaneously with the contact of a water-soluble film as a transfer ink carrying sheet with water. 2. An inclined surface is provided between the transfer film supply device and the transfer tank, and the transfer film fed from the transfer film supply device passes through the inclined surface into the transfer tank. 2. The transfer ink activation method according to claim 1, wherein the transfer ink is guided and the transfer ink is activated for a transfer film passing on the inclined surface. 3. A water outlet is provided on the inclined surface, and a water flow having a constant flow rate is formed on the upper surface of the inclined surface by water flowing out from the water outlet, and the water is fed out from the transfer film supply device. 3. The method according to claim 2, wherein the transfer film is supplied to the transfer tank in accordance with the water flow on the inclined surface.