JP3424824B2 - Safety confirmation image forming product, image holding component in safety confirmation image forming product, and manufacturing method thereof - Google Patents

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

TECHNICAL FIELD The present invention relates to the production of safety confirmation documents such as passports, identification cards, identification badges and labels, and driver's licenses. More particularly, it relates to techniques used to impart a more secure printed image to a laminate structure than that obtained by conventional means.

[Background] The most common method of making an identification card, identification badge, etc. is (i) mounting a photo on a backing sheet of a light card, and (ii) mounting the photo (with the photo attached). Sandwiching between two sheets of transparent plastic material, then (iii) bonding (using heat) the transparent sheets along the edges. However,
Such cards or badges should be cut along the edges of the clear sheet, the card removed, the new photo replaced, and the modified card then placed between two new sheets of clear plastic material. Since it can be sealed, it does not have the security required to pass through passports or areas containing classified information.

Further, the passport is a transparent strip of a polyester material having an adhesive on at least a part of the page (where the photo is attached) on one side of which a photo is pasted on a page of the passport using ordinary paper glue or It can be made with the technology of covering with glass bead laminate. In this way the photo is covered with transparent strips or glass beads and security is improved. However, the intentional person can separate the composition of the passport page and then use this technique to replace the photo on the passport with a new photo.

To improve the security of the passport and ID card, photo information (including the image of the holder of the passport or ID card) on the back cover or card of the passport is better than simply putting a photo on the sheet. Print on the sheet,
It has been proposed to cover the printed image and prevent the deliberate (and inadvertent) removal of the information. However, no costly and technically viable techniques have been developed to make this attempt.

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION It is an object of the invention to image a layer of transparent media and a laminate formed from paper, card or the like,
It is an object of the present invention to provide a technology that satisfies the requirements for manufacturing safer passports, identification cards, security badges, identification labels and the like.

The purpose of this is that when the layer of paste is heated to create a bond, the image or hot paste (ie, This can be achieved with the surprising finding that it can be formed at low temperature on (or in) a layer of paste with a melting point of about 95 ° C. Thus, one side of the sheet of transparent medium (eg, a layer composed of polyester material or glass beads) is coated with hot glue, and the layer of glue is coated using laser xerographic techniques or printing inks. The image is printed and the transparent medium is subsequently adhered to a sheet of paper or other substrate by heat treatment. When such thermal bonding is performed, the toner or ink used for image printing can be cured or dried before thermal bonding is performed, without the image degrading in the laminate so produced. Exists.

Furthermore, if compounds other than carbon or carbon-containing compounds are of high absorptivity for radiation having wavelengths in the visible spectrum or near-infrared region, these compounds are also used to produce machine-readable properties. Can be

According to the present invention, an image-holding component in a safety-confirmed image-forming product having a laminated structure, which is a transparent medium having a layer of a high-melting-point sizing agent on one surface, and a layer in which glass beads are solidified Sheet and an image printed directly on the layer of glue, the image being made of a material of carbon or of high absorptivity of radiation having wavelengths in the visible spectrum or near infrared range. Formed of a substance that does not flow when applied to the paste layer,
An image holding component and a safety confirmation image forming product using the component, wherein the substance is cured or dried before the adhesive layer is melted and subjected to thermal bonding. To be done.

According to another aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of manufacturing an image holding part in a safety confirmation image forming object having a laminated structure,
(A) a step of supplying a transparent medium sheet having a layer of glass beads hardened and having a high melting point glue layer on one side; and (b) a substance made of carbon in the glue layer. Directly printing an image using a substance that has a high absorptance of radiation having a wavelength in the visible spectrum or near-infrared region, and that does not flow when applied to the paste layer. And (c) curing or drying the substance through a means for curing or drying, if necessary, until the layer of the paste is melted and subjected to thermal bonding. A manufacturing method characterized by the above is provided.

In almost all uses of the invention, the image (which consists of or comprises printing) is visible through a transparent medium, so that the image is usually inverted onto the glue layer ( Reverse) printed as an image.

Without limiting the generality of the carbon-containing or radiation-absorbing compounds used in the present invention, images can be obtained by laser xerography or other photocopying techniques.
Dot by using an ink jet printer (unless the ink used is selected or thickened so that it does not flow in contact with the glue layer), using a typewriter ribbon (preferably a carbon typewriter ribbon) It can be created by a matrix printer or by a typewriter suitable for printing a mirror image of the normal characters of the typewriter. The equivalent of a photographic image can be produced by suitable dot printing using an inkjet printer and a dot matrix printer. Image printing is accomplished by scanning the image to program the printer to determine the dot density of the pixels that make up the image. Clearly, if the typewriter ribbon is a medium that applies carbon or a carbon-containing compound to the glue layer, it is not necessary to cure the image material before proceeding to the thermal bonding process of the present invention.

When a programmable printer is used in the imaging process of the present invention, the entire page of a passport or both an identification card or badge consisting of both photographic images and letters can be printed on the printer.

If the printer used to form the characters is not capable of producing photographic images, the passport page or identification card or badge can be printed in two printing steps. The first printing step creates the required lettering image and the second printing step provides a photographic image of the passport holder or ID card or badge holder (of course, the image may be printed before lettering. Good). The glue layer containing the two printed images is then contacted with a substrate and high temperature heat treatment is used to make a complete passport page or identification card or badge.

If more strength is required in the final product laminate, one or more layers of suitable material, preferably (although not necessarily) using high temperature adhesive bonding techniques, the present invention is used. It may be adhered to the substrate of the product laminate.

Embodiments of the present invention will now be described by way of example with reference to the accompanying drawings.

Detailed Description of Illustrated Embodiments FIG. 1 shows a transparent polyester material, such as “Mylar” ™, or other known flexible, transparent polyester, used in sheet form. Shown is a sheet of material 10 on one side of which is a thin layer of known hot glue 11
Has been applied by the manufacturer.

FIG. 2 shows a glass bead laminate consisting of a layer 20 of glass beads hardened on one side with a thin layer 11 of hot glue. An optional (usually present) sheet 26 of backing paper is included to improve the strength of the laminate and protect the glass beads on the face 21 of the layer.

In either case, the image, which is the normally inverted image of the lettering associated with the photographic image viewed from the direction of arrow A through the transparent sheet, is a paste using carbon or a carbon-containing compound. Printed in area 12 of layer 11. As mentioned above, laser xerography is a convenient means for creating images. Such an image creating means is preferred, but with the use of scanners and programmed printers,
It is known that the development in that technology makes the printer programmable, making it the preferred device for imaging.

When a part of the image is lettering as in the example shown in the drawing, the image of lettering is applied to the paste layer either before or after the image of photographic impression is applied.
If the image is created by a xerographic process or printing ink, the toner is cured or the ink is removed before moving on to the next step in the production of the laminated product.
Must be dried. Curing or drying is usually
It can be done in a short time. When laser xerography is used for imaging, the heat required to cure the toner is actually applied as part of the printing process. Surprisingly, the paste layer 11 does not soften during passage through the printer, even though the heat to cure the toner is sufficient to melt the hot paste.

When the image toner is hardened or the image printing ink is dried, a paste layer 11 is sandwiched between the transparent sheet 10 or 20 and the base material 13 to form a paper or a suitable material. The transparent sheet 10 or 20 is placed on the substrate 13. The substrate 13 has information printed in areas 14 outside the area of the substrate covered by the image area 12 of the glue layer 11.

The sandwich of the substrate 13 and the sheet 10 or 20 is then heat-treated by a conventional method,
A transparent sheet 10 or 20 is joined to a substrate 13 to make a two sheet laminated product. After this step, it becomes very difficult to separate the sheet 10 (or 20) from the substrate 13. The surprising thing about such heat treatment (the temperature of the composition of the sandwich structure is at least about 95 ° C. during the heat treatment to bond the sheet 10 or 20 and the substrate 13 with the high temperature paste layer 11) is , The image printed on or in the glue layer is not destroyed or distorted and the identity and clarity are retained even if the glue is melted during the high temperature bonding process. is there.

After the heat treatment step, the laminate product substrate 13 is adhered to an auxiliary sheet 27 of paper or cardboard or other suitable material to provide a thicker and stronger laminate structure. It has been found that such supplemental bonding does not destroy or distort the original image of the area 12 of the basic laminate structure. In fact, in tests with images produced by this invention, when the image contains alphanumeric characters,
The letters are the International Civil Aviation Organization Specification No. 930
It remains mechanically readable as required by 3. Thus, the present invention incorporates stable machine-readable features into passports and other travel documents.

When the glass bead laminate of FIG. 2 is used,
The protective backing sheet 26 is peeled from the laminated product after it is manufactured, exposing the outer surface of the transparent layer 20.

By using the technique of the present invention, an identification card,
You can make passport pages, security passes, badges, and the like, which are durable and much safer than those made by current practice. is there. In particular, the glass beads used in transparent media are very small and clearly transparent. Under normal diffuse illumination conditions, light incident on the glass beads exits at various angles in an essentially random fashion. Due to the random nature of this light, the glass beads do not interfere with the visible underlying image.

When a collimated light source is used to illuminate the glass bead layer, the light is incident on the bead and is reflected at the back of the bead back towards the light source. This can be illuminated with a small flashlight. The light that is reflected back is
It gives an indication that the substrate is authentic, ie what it should be. If someone tries to peel the laminate from its underlying substrate, the fragile glass bead layer will be distorted and will no longer effectively retroreflect light. In this way, an indication of what has been tampered with can be provided.

While particular embodiments of the present invention have been illustrated and described above, those skilled in the art can make variations to the described embodiments without departing from the inventive concept. Understand that it is a thing. [Brief description of drawings]

1 is a cross-sectional view (partially schematic) through a sheet of transparent polyester material that is to be glued to an image printed backing sheet.

FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view (partially schematic) through a glass bead laminate sheet having a high temperature glue layer to be adhered to a substrate.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (56) References JP-A-1-283191 (JP, A) Actual development Sho 62-187784 (JP, U) (58) Fields investigated (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) B42D 15/10

Claims (8)

(57) [Claims] Claim: What is claimed is: 1. An image-holding component in a safety-confirmed image-forming product having a laminated structure, which is a transparent medium having a layer (11) of a high-melting-point sizing agent on one surface and a layer in which glass beads are solidified. Seats (20)
And an image (12) printed directly on the glue layer (11), the image (12) being of a substance made of carbon or of a radiation having a wavelength in the visible spectrum or near infrared region. It is formed of a substance having a high absorption rate and does not flow even when applied to the paste layer (11), and the substance is heated by melting the paste layer (11). An image holding component characterized by being cured or dried before being used for adhesion. 2. The image-bearing component of claim 1, wherein the substance is xerographic toner or ink from an inkjet printer. 3. The image (12) comprises a photographic image and / or alphanumeric characters.
Image holding parts. 4. The image holding component according to claim 3, wherein the alphanumeric characters are machine-readable. 5. A safety confirmation image formation product having a laminate structure, comprising the image holding component defined in any one of claims 1 to 4, wherein the transparent medium sheet (20) is the paste. Layers of (11)
A safety confirmation image-formed product, characterized in that it is adhered to the substrate (13) by. 6. A method for producing an image holding component in a safety confirmation image forming product of a laminated structure, comprising: (a) a layer of glass beads hardened, and a layer (11) of a high melting point adhesive agent on one side. Having a sheet of transparent medium (2
0), and (b) the paste layer (11) is made of a substance made of carbon or a substance having a high absorptivity of radiation having a wavelength in the visible spectrum or near-infrared region. And printing the image (12) directly using a substance that does not flow when applied to the sizing agent layer (11), and (c) curing the substance as necessary or A step of curing or drying the layer (11) of the sizing agent via a drying means until the layer (11) is melted and subjected to thermal bonding. 7. The method according to claim 6, wherein in the step (a), the surface of the transparent medium sheet (20) is coated with a layer (11) of a high melting point paste. 8. The method according to claim 6 or 7, wherein the image (12) is (a) xerographically using toner as the substance, or (b) carbon or a carbon-containing compound as the substance. Is formed on the layer (11) of the paste by means of a programmable printer which supplies the ribbon with a ribbon, or (c) by an inkjet printer which uses ink as the substance.