JPH01301280A - Multi-color printing method for vessel - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To enable the immediate printing and the multi-type and small-quantity printing of original image information, by a method wherein, an image of one color toner charged reversely to an electrical insulator layer is formed on a photoconductor layer, the surface of the electrical insulator layer is electrically charged, the toner image is transferred on the surface of the electrical insulator layer of a vessel in an electrical insulating liquid by an electrophoresis, and an image of the other color toner is similarly transferred on said image. CONSTITUTION:A photoconductor layer on a photosensitive drum 15 is electrically charged uniformly by a charger 8 and exposed to light by an exposure device 9 correspondingly to an image stored in a memory, thus having a charged image thereon. The image is applied with charged Cyan toner particles in a liquid toner 31 by a developing device 10. In a transfer device 16, the toner particles are attracted to a lamination surface of a metal vessel 1, which is charged by a charger 11 to have a voltage higher than that of the photoconductor layer 4 on the photosensitive drum 15, to be applied to the metal vessel 1 by an electrophoresis in an insulating liquid 42. The resistering in a multi-color printing is performed by a detector 12, and a Magenta toner and a Yellow toner are successively applied to the metal vessel 1 so as to be overlapped with each other by the same device; thus, a multi-color printing is carried out. In this manner, a beautiful printing with fine toner particles is made available, and a multi-type and small-quantity printing is can be performed by a plate-free printing.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION [Field of Industrial Application] The present invention relates to a method for printing containers, and more specifically, the present invention relates to a method for printing containers. , relates to a container printing method that enables unlimited printing.

[Conventional technology]

Conventionally, methods for printing on containers include a flat plate printing method, a letterpress printing method, a letterpress offset printing method, or a screen printing method. In the lithographic offset printing method, ink is applied to the image area of a lithographic plate, which has an oleophilic image area and a hydrophilic non-image area, and then the ink on the lithographic plate is transferred to a rubber blanket. The letterpress printing method is a method of printing on a printing material, and is a method in which ink is applied to the convex image area on a printing plate, and this ink is printed on the printing material. The letterpress offset printing method, also called the dry offset printing method, involves applying ink to the printing area of a letterpress, which has a raised drawing area and four non-printing areas, and then applying the ink on the letterpress to a rubber blanket. This is a method of transferring and printing the ink on a rubber blanket onto a printing material, and the screen printing method is a method of printing on a printing material using a screen plate through which ink passes only in the image area. Although these conventional printing methods are excellent in terms of productivity during mass production, they all have the drawbacks of being labor intensive and requiring time and labor for the plate-making process prior to printing. In recent years, electronics have progressed in the field of printing, with computers using layout scanners used in the manuscript production stage, and direct plate-making systems being developed in the plate-making process. However, the above-mentioned drawbacks have not yet been solved.

In addition, with the diversification of values, the demand for high-mix, low-volume printing is increasing, and it has become difficult to meet this demand with the conventional mid-year method, which lacks instant printing capabilities.

On the other hand, as a printing technology that does not use a printing plate, in liquid 1≦11
When the body is paper, there are so-called non-impact printing techniques such as electrophotography, inkjet method, and thermal transfer method. These techniques can directly obtain images from computer image output without using printing plates. In particular, electrophotography is used in copying machines, facsimile machines, printers, etc., and is attracting attention as a technology that can replace conventional printing.

In addition, by applying this method to printing,
There is a multicolor label manufacturing apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent No. 9-23355. In the present invention, in each of a plurality of electrophotographic apparatuses, a photoreceptor is charged by a charging device, a charged latent image is created by projecting light corresponding to the document onto the surface of the photoreceptor by an exposure device, and a toner image is formed by a developing device 1t. is attached to the surface of the photoreceptor to visualize the latent image, then a transfer device visualizes the toner image on the surface of the label base material, and finally a fixing device fixes the visualized image on the multicolor label. It features manufacturing equipment. However, printing containers using electrophotography has not been put to practical use.

[Problem that the invention seeks to solve]

However, when electrophotography was used to mark +il+ on containers, there was a problem in the transfer process. That is, both the photoconductor layer and the container have hard surfaces, and even if they are brought into pressure contact with the toner sandwiched between them, the toner and the container do not fit well, and a clean transfer cannot be performed.

The present invention has been made to solve the above problems.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for printing containers that can produce images with fine grains of 1 to 100% and no crushing due to printing pressure. The purpose of the present invention is to provide a printing method.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a container printing method that instantly prints image information of a document stored in a computer and enables high-mix, low-volume printing.

Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a method for printing containers that is easy to register when printing in multiple colors.

[Means for solving the problem] By laminating an electrical insulator layer on the surface of a container whose inner surface is made of 891 body layers, and using an electrophotographic method using liquid toner,
An image of a single color toner charged to the opposite polarity to that of the electrical insulating layer is formed on the photoconductor layer, the surface of the electrical insulating layer is charged, and the images 1 to 1 are exposed to electricity in an electrically insulating liquid. The toner is transferred onto the surface of the electrical insulating layer of the container by electrophoresis, and toners of other colors are similarly transferred.

[Effect]

Toner particles adhering to the photoconductor layer by electrostatic force tend to have opposite polarity to the toner in the electrically insulating liquid when the electrically insulating layer of the container, which is charged at a higher voltage than the photoconductor layer, approaches. It is attracted by the Coulomb force and migrates to the electrically insulating layer of the container. That is, image transfer is performed. In particular, in the case of a liquid toner in which toner particles are dispersed in an electrically insulating liquid, the diameter of the toner particles is much smaller than that of a powdered toner, so the transfer is easily carried out, and the toner particles are formed in an electrically insulating layer on the surface of the container. It penetrates into the pores of the paper and creates a strong printing surface.

Further, since the toner transfer is carried out in an electrically insulating liquid, even if the photoconductor layer and the electrically insulating layer are separated by about 100 μm, sufficient transfer is possible with a surface potential of 1 to 2 kV.

[Example] Next, an example of the present invention shown in the drawings will be described. In the figure, 1 indicates that the resin containing titanium oxide on the surface is about 10 to 2
It is a metal container laminated to a thickness of 0μ, and is placed over the conductive cloak 1 nor 2 provided on the rotary table 3 by a supply device (not shown), and
4114, it is sent together with the mandrel 2 to a position close to the surface of the photoreceptor drum 15 (approximately 100 μm
) to stop and rotate. The photoreceptor drum 15 is formed of a resin in which vapor-deposited amorphous silicon, vapor-deposited amorphous selenium, zinc oxide, modified photoconductor (polyvinyl carbazole, phthalcyanine, etc.) is dispersed and is laminated on the surface of the drum-shaped conductor 5. A photoconductor layer 4 is arranged close to the metal container 1 to rotate about an axis 6. A charging device 8, an exposure device 9, and a developing device 10 are provided around the photoconductor drum 15, and a transfer device 16 that transfers the toner on the photoconductor layer 4 onto the resin layer of the metal container 1 by an electric field and the photoconductor. A resilient break-door is provided for removing toner remaining on drum 15.

The exposure device 9 is composed of a laser oscillator 20, an optical modulator 21, a mirror 22, a rotating polygon mirror 23, and an fθ lens 24. The laser beam emitted from the laser oscillator 20 is converted into a signal from an image memory by an optical modulator 21. The light is modulated accordingly, focused onto the photoconductor layer 4 by the mirror 22, rotating polygon mirror 23, and fθ lens 24, and scanned in a direction perpendicular to the traveling direction of the drum surface. Developing device ffff, 10 is isoparaffin, carbon tetrachloride, fluorinated chlorinated ethylene,
A liquid toner 31 in which charged toner particles are dispersed and suspended by adsorbing ions in an insulating liquid such as a petroleum-based or olefin-based solvent such as cyclohexane is brought into contact with the photoconductor layer 4 of the photoreceptor drum 15. This is a device in which 1 to 1 particles are attached to the photoconductor layer 4 by the Crohn force generated by a latent image electric field. circulated in the path. The nozzle 35 has a long slit-shaped opening in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the paper, and the liquid toner 31 ejected from the nozzle 35 swells up in the tank 30 and reaches the light guide layer 4 .
come into contact with. The charging device 11 charges the surface of the metal container 1 sent to a position close to the photoreceptor drum 15 to a surface potential of 1 kV to 2 kV with a polarity opposite to that of the toner particles by corona discharge. Reference numeral 12 denotes a detector for registration during multicolor printing, which detects registration marks on the metal container 1.

The transfer device 16 uses an insulating liquid 4 similar to the solvent of liquid toner.
2 is filled between the photoreceptor drum 15 and the metal container 1 to transfer the toner particles forming the toner image on the photoreceptor drum 15 onto the surface of the metal container 1 by electrophoresis. The liquid 42 is sucked through the suction pipe 41 by the pump 43 and filtered through the filter 44. Discharge pipe 45. It is poured into a wedge-shaped space formed by the photosensitive drum 15 and the metal container 1 via the nozzle 46 . The insulating liquid 42 flowing downward from between the photoreceptor drum 15 and the metal container 1 is scraped off by the elastic blade 7 that is in pressure contact with the photoreceptor drum 15 and returned into the tank 40 . Filter 44 captures toner particles mixed in insulating liquid 42 .

The embodiment of the present invention is constructed as described above, and its operation will be explained next.

The photoconductor layer on the photosensitive drum 15 is first uniformly charged by the charging device 8 . Next, when this photosensitive drum 15 is exposed by the exposure device 9 in accordance with the image stored in the memory, a band ml corresponding to the image is formed. Charged cyan toner particles in the liquid toner 31 are attached to the charged latent image thus formed by the developing device 10. The toner is transferred to the photosensitive drum 15 bs +
The transfer device 16 transfers the image onto the laminated surface of the rotating metal container 1. That is, toner particles are attracted to the laminated surface of the metal container 1, which is charged by the charging device 11 to a voltage higher than that of the photoconductor layer 4 on the photoconductor drum 15, and are electrophoresed in the insulating liquid 42, so that the toner particles are electrophoresed in the metal container 1. Attach to 1. Registration during multi-color printing is performed using a detector 12.
This is done by controlling the rotation of the mandrel 2 so that the image position on the photosensitive drum 15, which is detected by the upper registration mark and recognized by the computer, matches the printing position on the metal container 1. The toner remaining on the photoreceptor drum 15 is removed together with the insulating liquid 42 by the blade 7, and the photoreceptor drum 15 is uniformly charged with σf by the charging device 8 for the next printing.

The metal container 1 printed in this manner is taken out from the rotary table 3 by a take-out device (not shown). A magenta toner and a yellow toner are applied to the metal container 1 one after the other in an overlapping manner using a device similar to that described above to perform multicolor printing.

[Effects of the Invention] Since liquid toner is used in the multicolor printing method for containers according to the present invention, a clean mark t01 with fine toner particles is obtained. In addition, since electrophoresis is used to transfer the toner image onto the printing material, the transfer is performed reliably even if the photosensitive drum and the printing material are relatively far apart, ensuring that the image is not crushed by printing pressure. .

Furthermore, since the present invention utilizes electrophotography, unlimited printing is possible without the need for printing plates, and the image information of the original stored in the computer can be immediately printed, making it possible to print high-mix, low-volume printing 1. Suitable.

Furthermore, when performing multicolor printing, registration is easy.

[Brief explanation of the drawing]

The figure is a sectional view showing an embodiment of the present invention. DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1... Metal container, 2... Mandrel having conductivity, 3... Rotating table, 4... Photoconductor layer, 5...
- Conductor, 6... Shaft, 7... Blade, 8... Charging device, 9... Exposure device, 10... Developing device, 11
...Charging device, 12...Detector 1.14...Axis,
15... Photoreceptor]: Ram, 16... Transfer device, 20
... Laser oscillator, 21... Optical modulator, 22...
Mirror, 23... Rotating polygon mirror, 24... fO lens, 30... Tank, 31... Liquid toner, 32...
・Pump, 33...Suction pipe, 34...Discharge pipe, 35
... nozzle, 40 ... tank, 41 ... suction pipe,
42... Insulating liquid, 43... Pump, 44...
Filter, 45...discharge pipe. 46... Nozzle.

Claims (1)

[Claims] An electrically insulating layer is laminated on the surface of a container whose inner surface is made of a conductive layer, and by electrophotography using liquid toner, a single color charged to the opposite polarity to the electrically insulating layer is deposited on the photoconductive layer. forming a toner image and charging the surface of the electrical insulating layer;
A multicolor printing method for containers, characterized in that the toner image is transferred onto the surface of the electrical insulating layer of the container by electrophoresis in an electrically insulating liquid, and toners of other colors are similarly transferred.