WO2007119091A1

WO2007119091A1 - Apparatus for putting together personalized substrates

Info

Publication number: WO2007119091A1
Application number: PCT/IB2006/001099
Authority: WO
Inventors: Robert Charles Bright
Original assignee: Matica Swiss Ag
Priority date: 2006-04-18
Filing date: 2006-04-18
Publication date: 2007-10-25

Abstract

Method for putting together plastic personalized substrates with paper substrates correlated with the unique computerized data contained in the plastic substrate itself, the said method being characterized by the following operational steps: the plastic card is fed from a loading hopper (1), read by a reader (2) connected to the computer (15) and passed to the pick-up station (3), picked up by the manipulator (13), which has a sucker (7), to position the said plastic card under the applicator (6) in order to join it physically to the anonymous paper substrate supplied by the feeder (8), the card being subsequently printed individually by the printer (11) connected to the computer (15) which in turn is connected to an associated database.

Description

Apparatus for putting together personalized substrates

PRIOR ART

The present invention relates to processes for personalizing and mailing ordinary plastic cards. To make these cards, it is common to use integrated systems that put together the individual personalized paper substrate and plastic substrate, which together physically form the card. These traditional methods of assembly, generally known as "mailing" or "matching", technically speaking are simply systems in which two or more independent machines are put together. Feeders, conveyors, applicators and printers, in an appropriate sequence, physically and logically put together one or more plastic cards with a precisely determined paper substrate, so as unambiguously to correlate with each individual sheet bearing printed information and data the matching corresponding plastic card. This is done in order to enable the resulting plastic card to be passed on swiftly to the subsequent "stuffing" processes of folding and insertion for mailing.

All the putting-together systems described above consist alike of two quite separate paths that intersect only at the putting-together station. The first of these paths is that followed by the individual plastic cards, and the second is for the feeding, printing and transferring of the corresponding paper substrates .

In general terms, without going into the detail of the prior art, the broad outlines of the principle of operation can be said to be as follows:

the individual plastic cards, stored in a magazine or coming directly from pre-installed personalization systems, are carried by conveyors to an ordinary data- reading device which reads the data contained in the plastic cards themselves.

The said reading system can read and unambiguously identify the data contained in the plastic card irrespective of whether they are on a magnetic strip, in a microchip or directly printed on the card itself.

The data held on the plastic card and identified by the reader are the key used to interrogate ordinary databases holding all the information correlated therewith, including personal details, adJresses, and banking and other information; in other words, all the details which are usually regarded as sensitive and confidential.

Having been collected, the information and data are then sent by computerized means to a printer positioned at the start of the second path, where for each read plastic card it prints a single paper document to which it is essential that the corresponding plastic card be physically attached. It is this stage that has hitherto always been the most delicate and technically critical stage of the entire putting-together system.

The origin of the problem lies in the fact that the two independent elements - the printed paper document and the corresponding plastic card - are conveyed simultaneously to the putting-together station where they are physically united, usually with the aid of ordinary adhesives or two-sided labels. The resulting two-part document is then sent on for subsequent processing and dispatch.

The still unsolved problem of the above traditional method lies in the difficulty of achieving certainty of matching up the right two elements, and it is perfectly possible that during the independent movement of the two entities along the two independent paths of the system, errors of synchronization or recognition will occur. These synchronization errors can even cause the wrong two elements (plastic card and printed sheet) to be joined together. This type of error is the real weak point of the system and is a constant source of problems, especially in view of the sensitivity of the data involved.

DESCRIPTION

It is an object of the present invention to describe an innovative way of putting together personalized substrates that is cheap, quick and above all reliable. The present method consists in the basic concept of avoiding creating within the system the hazardous dualism described above. To avoid this conceptually insoluble problem, open as it is to mismatching errors, the present patent application sets out to describe an innovative method that does not feed through the system two corresponding but separate elements which will later go to make up the complete plastic card. To overcome this problem, the present invention discloses a new method in which the paper substrate is printed only after the plastic card has _. been read, passed to the putting-together station and physically fixed to the substrate itself. This innovative approach eliminates the possibility of mismatches between the two elements because it focuses the entire operation on a single element rather than on two separate entities as used to be the case. To make this singularity of focus possible, the method avoids printing the sensitive data on the paper substrate until it is fixed to the plastic card. According to the present invention, it is not until the plastic card has been read, passed to the putting-together station and united with an anonymous paper substrate that it is printed with the corresponding data contained in its plastic substrate . The most suitable printing technique for printing on the blank paper substrate the data corresponding to the data held in the plastic card, is inkjet printing using a matrix print head, but there is no reason why any other known printing technique that would make the said operation easier or economically advantageous should not be used.

DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Fig. 1 shows a general view of the apparatus described in the present invention in which may be seen the plastic card loading hopper (1) , the magnetic strip reader (2), the pick-up station (3), the track (4), the motor (5), the applicator (6), the sucker (7), the feeder of anonymous paper substrates (8), the conveyor (9), the tank of adhesive (10), the printer (11), the output conveyor (12), the manipulator (13) and the discharge chute (14) .

EMBODIMENT OF THE INVENTION

Referring to Figure 1, the method described in the present invention for putting together personalized substrates with paper substrates correlated with the unique data, uses a set of apparatuses consisting of a hopper (1) for feeding the personalized plastic cards to a reader (2) capable of reading the magnetic strip, or the microchip, or any other identifying character positioned on the plastic card, in accordance with ISO standard 7810/16. The said reader (2) reads the data contained in the plastic card and then sends these data to a computer (15). The computer (15) looks for the data associated with the name in an associated database and sends the returned data directly to the printer (H) •

Having been read by the reader (2) , the plastic card is sent to the station (3) where it is picked up by the manipulator (13), which travels along the track (4) powered by the motor (5) .

The said manipulator (13) , being provided with the sucker (7), transfers the card to the position where it is to be put together with the anonymous paper substrate.

Each individual anonymous paper substrate is supplied by the feeder (8) and moved by the belt conveyor (9) underneath the applicator (6).

When the anonymous plastic card and the paper substrate are both in the correct position, the card is pressed onto the anonymous paper substrate by means of the pneumatic piston of the applicator (6). To ensure the adhesion of the anonymous paper substrate to the plastic card, a small amount of adhesive previously applied by a metered delivery device (10) is deposited on the area of contact.

It is only after this bonding operation has been performed that the substrate is printed, the printing device (11) being operated under the control of the computer (15), the said printing device essentially consists of an inkjet head. Its means of transverse translational movement enable all the correlated data present in the computer (15) and sent to the printer (11) to be printed correctly on the paper substrate.

At this point the process is concluded and the paper substrate with its card is discharged by the output conveyor (12) .

Claims

1. Method for putting together plastic personalized substrates with paper substrates correlated with the unique computerized data contained in the plastic substrate itself, the said method being characterized by the following operational steps: the plastic card is fed from a loading hopper (1) , read by a reader (2) connected to the computer (15) , passed to the pick-up station (3) , and picked up by the manipulator (13) , which has a sucker (7), to position the said plastic card under the applicator (6) in order to join it physically to the anonymous paper substrate supplied by the feeder (8) , the card then being individually printed by the printer (11) connected to the computer (15) which in turn is connected to an associated database.

2. Method according to Claim 1, in which the reading of the plastic card by the reader employs a magnetic strip, a microchip/microchips or optical reading.

3. Method according to the preceding claims, in which the plastic card and the paper substrate are physically put together using natural glues or any chemical adhesive contained in the tank (10).

4. Method according to the preceding claims, in which the computer (15) is an ordinary computer terminal connected to the reader (2) , a database and the printer (11) .

5. Method according to the preceding claims, in which once the plastic card has been bonded to the paper substrate and printed, the card is removed by the output conveyor (12) .