Patent Application
20110234724
This disclosure relates to media handling systems, and more specifically, to an improved method and apparatus for enhancing hold-down of corrugated media on a vacuum transport while passing through the print zone of an ink jet printer.
Flexographic printing as shown, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 7,486,420 is the major process used to print packaging materials. Flexography is used to print corrugated containers, folding cartons, corrugated board displays, multi-wall sacks, paper sacks, plastic bags, milk cartons, disposable cups and containers, labels, etc. In the typical flexographic printing sequence, the substrate is fed into a press from a roll or pre-cut board. The image is printed as the substrate is pulled through a series of flexographic cylinders, or stations, or print units. Each print unit is printing a single color. Unlike traditional cylinder based ink transfer technologies for printing of corrugated materials, such as, Flexography, digital ink jet printing does not contact the substrate and requires that the corrugated media be held flat and be precisely spaced from the print head plane throughout the entire print zone. Depths of Focus (DoF) gaps of the order of 1.0±0.2 mm are typical and they are difficult to achieve and maintain across a large area. Variations in this critical gap cause Time of Flight errors in pixel placement onto the moving media and degrade image quality. Since corrugated material is quite stiff (about 100 times that of typical office papers) any residual curl in boards of the material is difficult to suppress over a large area. In digital ink jet printing of corrugated material, the print zone area is measured in square feet and not a narrow band of a few square inches as with a Flexographic cylinder. Suppressing the curl and holding the corrugated boards flat to within +/−200 μm is a challenge.
The composite structure of corrugated board consists of an inner liner, corrugated medium and an outer liner glued together at the peaks of the corrugated medium which gives corrugation its strength and stiffness. The paper fiber orientation is in the machine direction for both inner and outer liners and medium. The fiber orientation provides greater board stiffness and lower shrink rate versus moisture content in the machine direction. In conventional media vacuum transport systems the challenging areas are the sheet edges, due to leakage as the vacuum is exposed to ambient.
Typically, Flexography corrugated board direct print systems employ a soft elastomer print pad mounted on a rotating drum. The pad is coated with ink and pressed against the corrugated board to transfer the image. The print pads are not continuous around the circumference of the drum so Flexography presses, in most applications, use mechanical grippers to constrain the lead and trail edges of the board or vacuum hold-down elements. Replacing the Flexographic printing process with solid or gel ink jet heads requires maintaining a gap of less than 1 mm between the corrugated board and print heads and holding the entire board flat to within +/−200 μm to achieve acceptable image quality. Mechanical grippers cannot maintain the flatness specification over the entire board surface. A vacuum transport belt offers a simple and effective way to hold and transport the board under the print head without gripping the board's top surface. Corrugated stiffness is greater than 100 times that of typical office papers, therefore, the required vacuum force to hold-down an up-curled board is significantly higher. As a result of the high vacuum pressure, a large drag force (between the transport belt and the vacuum platen) is generated, which in turn makes it difficult to drive the hold-down transport belt. The large drag forces induce variations in the transport belt motion relative to the print heads that cause spatial errors between the ink dot placement on the board resulting in banding and other image defects.
One attempt at media conditioning is shown in copending U.S. application Ser. No. 11/955,456 cited hereinabove that discloses a precurling method for improving paper hold-down on a drum or belt. In another example, U.S. Pat. No. 7,538,299 B2 shows a media conditioning module for conditioning sheets that comprises a heater and a cooler to apply heated and cool air to both sides of media en route to an image transfer station.
In answer to these problems and disclosed herein is the use of heat applied to the underside of a corrugated board to drive moisture out of an inner liner of the board, thereby causing it to shrink and pull a flat board into a concave arch. The edges of a board with up curl will be pulled down flattening the board or reversing the curl and pulling the board into a concave arch depending on the amount of up curl and moisture loss. By heating the underside of the corrugated board prior to transferring it onto a vacuum transport, edges of the board will curl down and remain curled until the inner liner absorbs moisture from the ambient environment and equilibrates back to its original moisture content and shape. The corrugated board paper fiber orientation previously described causes the board to curl more in the cross machine direction compared to the machine direction. The cross machine direction curl generated can be 10× greater than the machine direction curl depending on the media properties, flute size and initial moisture content or the corrugated board.
A board with up curl has a convex shape. The edges are cantilevered from the center of the board. Vacuum pressure must overcome the flexural stiffness of the board to pull the edges down against the transport belt. The up curled edges result in large air leakage and reduced vacuum pressure at the edges. Increasing the vacuum pressure to compensate for the losses at the edges results in higher pressures and drag forces at the center of the board. A concave board is simply supported at the edges. The flexural stiffness of the board works with the vacuum pressure to hold the edges of the board against the transport belt sealing the perimeter of the board and distributing vacuum evenly over the entire surface of the board. Thus, less vacuum pressure translates to lower friction between the transport belt and a platen enabling a smaller drive torque and improved motion quality to move the board and belt under a series of print heads.
Various of the above-mentioned and further features and advantages will be apparent to those skilled in the art from the specific apparatus and its operation or methods described in the example(s) below, and the claims. Thus, they will be better understood from this description of these specific embodiment(s), including the drawing figures (which are approximately to scale) wherein:
While the disclosure will be described hereinafter in connection with a preferred embodiment thereof, it will be understood that limiting the disclosure to that embodiment is not intended. On the contrary, it is intended to cover all alternatives, modifications and equivalents as may be included within the spirit and scope of the disclosure as defined by the appended claims.
The disclosure will now be described by reference to a preferred embodiment ink jet printing apparatus that includes a method and apparatus that pre-curls corrugated boards prior to transport through a printing zone.
For a general understanding of the features of the disclosure, reference is made to the drawings. In the drawings, like reference numerals have been used throughout to identify identical elements.
Referring now to printer 10 in
The recording section adjacent the recording head includes an endless conveyor belt 20 that includes a number of small holes (not shown) therein and wound around a drive roller 22B disposed downstream in the paper conveyance direction A and a driven roller 22A disposed upstream in the paper conveyance direction A. The conveyor belt 20, which could be woven and/or porous, etc., is configured such that it is circulatingly driven by the drive and driven rollers. A vacuum plenum 40 is connected through conduit 42 to a vacuum source 41 and adapted to apply vacuum pressure to the holes in conveyor belt 20 in order to attach corrugated board 18 to the belt 20 sliding across the vacuum platen 30 during recording by the recording head 14.
The ink jet recording head 14 faces a flat portion of the conveyance belt 20 and this facing area serves as an ejection area to which ink droplets are ejected from the ink jet recording head 14. The corrugated board 18 is retained by the conveyor belt 20 and transported through the ejection region, where the ink droplets corresponding to an image are ejected from ink jet recording head 14 and onto the board 18 in a state where the board 18 faces the ink jet recording head 14.
In order to maintain image quality and DoF between recording head 14 and corrugated boards beneath the recording head as shown in
Protecting the print head modules from board lift-off from the vacuum belt 20 and vacuum platen 30 caused by excessively curved, curled, bowed or distorted board or in the event of loss of vacuum is addressed with a series of star wheels as shown in
As mentioned hereinbefore, the composite structure of a corrugated board consists of an inner liner, corrugated medium and an outer liner glued together at the peaks of the corrugated medium which gives corrugation it strength and stiffness. In conventional media vacuum transports systems, the challenging areas are edges of the corrugated board due to leakage as the vacuum is exposed to the surrounding atmosphere. Test results have shown that pre-curling the board (towards the platen) dramatically reduces (by a factor of 9×) the required vacuum force to hold it flat.
Therefore, in order to improve image quality by maintaining DoF between recording head 14 and corrugated boards beneath the recording head and in accordance with the present disclosure as shown in
Most corrugation feeders feed from the bottom of the stack. Therefore, as an alternative or in addition to heater 15, an auxiliary heating element 16 is shown in
Alternatively, while adding moisture to the top liner will cause it to expand and bend a board 18 down generating down-curl, heating the board is advantageous over adding moisture because the dry bottom liner will have a higher modulus and be in tension compared to the moist top liner which will have lower modulus and in compression. Also, the moist top liner will be prone to puckering resulting in image defects.
Adding moisture to the top liner in low humidity conditions could improve the effectiveness of the heater by reducing the amount of heat energy required to achieve a predetermined delta in percent of moisture content (expansion vs. shrinkage) between the top and bottom liners corresponding to a desired amount of down-curl. Moisture and heat energy would be controlled by humidity sensors or media moisture sensors mounted in the feeder and temperature sensors mounted downstream of the heating element.
It should now be understood that a solution for low frequency DoF control errors in ink jet printing onto corrugated media has been disclosed that includes employing a heating element to heat the bottom side of a corrugated board before the board reaches a vacuum transport which transports the corrugated media to a series of staggered ink jet print head modules positioned over a platen and thereby improve image quality by enhancing the sealing of edges of the board to the platen.
The claims, as originally presented and as they may be amended, encompass variations, alternatives, modifications, improvements, equivalents, and substantial equivalents of the embodiments and teachings disclosed herein, including those that are presently unforeseen or unappreciated, and that, for example, may arise from applicants/patentees and others. Unless specifically recited in a claim, steps or components of claims should not be implied or imported from the specification or any other claims as to any particular order, number, position, size, shape, angle, color, or material.
Cross-reference is hereby made to commonly assigned and copending U.S. application Ser. No. 11/955,456 filed Dec. 13, 2007, and entitled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR ENHANCED SHEET HOLD DOWN ON AN IMAGING TRANSPORT” by Castillo, et al. (Attorney No. 20070970) and Ser. No. 12/471,778, filed May 26, 2009, and entitled “INK JET PRINTING DEPTH OF FOCUS CONTROL APPARATUS” by Bober, et al. (Attorney No. 20081794). The disclosures of the heretofore-mentioned applications are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety.
