Patent Application
20180220698
The present invention relates to a method and a device for applying identification features to a packing strip in order to authenticate the processed packing, according to the preambles of claims 1 and 9, as well as to a packing produced by means of the method, according to claim 13.
There are a very large number of methods for authenticating a multitude of identification features on the most diverse goods and their packages. The present invention relates to a method for applying identification features to a packing strip in order to authenticate the processed packing that is intended for foods, pharmaceutical goods, electronic appliances and in particular tobacco products such as cigarettes or cigars contained in this packing.
The term “strip” has here the meaning that, coming from a feed drum, it is generally guided to a packing installation, for being separated after being processed. The following steps are according to the kind of the goods to be packed.
The packing strip can be for the packing of smoking articles like cigarettes or cigars, foreseen as inner liner which can have a thickness of 30 μm 70 μm and be of plastic material, hybrid as well as metal coated or metal vaporized or plastic coated. It can also be a folding box board, a so-called blank, which has in general a thickness of 300 μm, and is often white or dyed e.g. in grey and may be plain, lacquered, printed and/or laminated with aluminium foil or plastic film. On occasion, the folding box board can have a thickness of about 600 μm. For the packing of food and pharmaceutical products the above mentioned inner liner is also used, or a metal foil of a thickness of about 10 μm to 50 μm or it can be an aluminium laminated inner liner with a weight of 20 g/m2 to 90 g/m2.
EP 1 867 470 B1 to the applicant of the present invention discloses a method and a device for authenticating identification features that are embossed on a packing foil where on one hand a foil of this kind, more particularly a so-called inner liner used in the tobacco industry, is satinized in addition to embossing identification features, and on the other hand, an array of identification features is embossed as a pattern on-line, read by a suitable apparatus, and compared to a template by means of an image processing method.
The thus defined method is successfully applied for authenticating packing foils which generally have a thickness of 30 to 70 μm and are e.g. used as inner liners, i.e. as packing foils that are wrapped around a number of cigarettes, the wrapped cigarettes being subsequently inserted into a cardboard cigarette packet. In this method, the identification features, generally in the form of point-shaped elements, are transferred onto the embossing rollers according to a defined template, and the foils embossed in this manner are decoded by means of the same template. To this end, optical reading methods and suitable encryption algorithms are applied.
In the period between the first filing of the aforementioned EP 1 867 470 B1 and the present invention, important changes both with respect to the arrangement of identification features, i.e. of codes and with respect to the packing materials have been tested.
It has become apparent, however, that the now existing multitude of codes that can be applied to packages simultaneously, e.g. barcodes or QR codes, may look impressive but ultimately do not ensure a secure authentication as the reproduction possibilities for falsifications have also enormously increased.
The packing materials for tobacco products such as cigarettes and cigars have been subject to continuous changes as well. Packing foils for the food or the tobacco industry have been embossed by means of embossing roller devices fora long time. In the case of tobacco products, the aforementioned inner liners are concerned, which may also serve as a packing material for chocolate, butter, or similar foods, or for electronic components. In parallel to the developments of the embossing roller technology, i.e. the manufacture of the embossing rollers, the packing materials also were subject to changes in that the originally used all-metal aluminium foils were replaced by paper foils whose surfaces were coated with ever thinner metal layers due to environmental considerations and the very thin metal layer was applied by sputtering. In the near future, the metallization of the inner liners will be further reduced or eventually omitted altogether.
Furthermore, efforts are lately being made to strongly restrict or completely eliminate advertising for tobacco products so that it will no longer be possible to emboss the inner liners with promotionally effective designs or with identification features to the former extent. Therefore, possibilities are being sought for producing new decorative effects without using eye-catching embossings, gold rims or decorations of the kind, and also for following new ways in the application of identification features.
At present, a number of the cigarettes are mostly wrapped in an inner liner and placed in a folded box. In most cases, moisture preservation and protection from exterior influences are enhanced by a wrapper made of a plastic film, e.g. a polypropylene film. Neither can the inner liner alone fulfil the desired functions e.g. of keeping the tobacco products moist and protecting them against exterior olfactory influences, on one hand, and of providing a certain stiffness for the mechanical protection of the cigarettes, on the Other hand, nor can the folded box alone. These requirements are currently met by a suitable folding box board material, also called “blank”.
In the exemplary embodiments of the present application reference is made in particular to inner liners, which have in general a thickness of 30 μm to 70 μm. It is expressly pointed out that the methods for applying identification features on inner liners described hereinafter merely represent examples and that the invention also applies to other packings such as packings for the food and pharmaceutical industry including metal foils of a thickness of about 20 μm, or hybrid and laminated as well as metal or plastic coated, or folding box board packings. Moreover, this method can also be used for applying other, e.g. decorative features. Furthermore the packing strip can also be printed or be embossed by a die embossing machine.
It is known that tobacco products are particularly susceptible to counterfeiting, not least in order to evade the high customs duties and taxes. This means that not only the tobacco industry itself, which of course suffers from the resulting damage, but also the customs and tax authorities are interested in determining whether the marketed cigarette packets are authentic.
Methods using the so-called signature of an object in order to verify its authenticity are known in the art, e.g. from GB 2411954 A. Surface sections of objects e.g. of paper have unique physical characteristics. These can be detected by measurements and the resulting data can be processed and subsequently used as a reference, i.e. as an identification feature. In practice, however, it has been found that the measuring and data processing expenditure is justifiable economically only in isolated cases. Furthermore, cellulose-based packing materials are natural products that may be subject to such alterations over time that a meaningful initial reference definition is difficult.
DE 2 746 440 C2 describes a mechanical technique that consists in an embossing operation for marking natural materials. The pressure applied to media such as textile materials, leather or the like and the vacuum technique used in this reference stimulated reflections on how a quasi-fiat embossing might be realized “on the fly” in an on-line process. The part to be embossed is fed to a chamber in which the medium is pressed flat against a lightly perforated band on a short distance by a vacuum. The debossed information is always applied in the same location in a correctly synchronized manner.
In DE102012020153A1, an endless band is used for embossing cards. The term “embossing” is meant to include the application of the most diverse contours to materials such as metals, paper, synthetic materials, leather or the like under the impact of pressure. Such contours are meant to include patterns, signatures, holograms or the like.
In a further development of such endless processes, dot printer matrixes synchronously act upon the flat portion of the medium in the embossing process, thereby allowing to apply changing information. To this end, the medium to be marked is moved on a printing band loop across a flat supporting plate that serves to receive the pressure applied by dot matrix printer modules that are moved along in synchronicity, possibly with an ink ribbon unless only pits are desired. Although modern dot matrix printers can print e.g. 600 characters per second, the result is unsatisfactory due to the high mechanical complexity and the required synchronicity of the rotary movements required for embossing packing material. Therefore, such a mechanical process was not found to be suitable for high-speed on-line embossing.
In the case of the tobacco industry, it would be particularly desirable to upgrade existing embossing stations using embossing rollers in order to apply additional identification features while maintaining the embossing speed that is usual today. Furthermore it would be desirable to integrate suitable devices for producing the identification features into existing packing lines. In contrast to the aforementioned signature principle, only a minimum amount of data should be required for the consecutive identification, e.g. a consecutive numbering. Furthermore the numbering should be achieved by means of arbitrary algorithms, thereby suggesting a random numbering to outsiders.
There is thus a need to be able to continuously provide packages produced in an on-line process with identification features generated in situ without the need of applying prefabricated marks by gluing, injecting or by other means and without the need of reducing the packing speed.
On the background of the prior art and the needs described above, it is the object of the present invention to provide a method and a device for applying identification features to a packing strip in order to authenticate the processed packing that allows embossing signs of all kinds, logos, folding lines, or coded signs through a material deformation by means of embossing rollers and producing identification features providing increased security with regard to the authentication of the packaged good without reducing the speed of the packing machine and modifying essentially the embossing station as well as not altering substantially the embossing station comprising a housing with at least two embossing rolls.
This object is attained by the method according to the independent method claims, and by the device according to the independent device claims. A packing produced according to the independent method claims is defined in corresponding independent claims. Further features and advantages are defined in the further claims.
The invention will be explained in more detail hereinafter with reference to drawings of exemplary embodiments.
According to the general inventive idea, a simple application of identification features providing a high authentication security is performed in an embossing station in addition to ail embossing methods using embossing rollers that are known per as. This is achieved by means of a laser installation by which material is removed from the packing strip in order to form the identification features or briefly ID features or other features. Currently, diode laser installations are found to be suitable for this purpose.
With the term “diode lasers” all kind of lasers are meant, which apply directly the emission of diodes. It is also possible to employ diode pumped solid state lasers, or solid state lasers, whereby the fibre lasers fall under this category. If more material on a surface has to be removed from the packing strip CO2-laser may be employed.
Laser direct machining of thermoplastics is known in the art. An exemplary technique is the manufacture of printed circuit boards according to a “reverse process”, so to speak. The tracks to be produced are cut out from a substrate covered with a synthetic material and subsequently metallised.
In the paper industry, large embossing rollers with special metallic surfaces are directly machined in 3D by means of lasers, and moreover the industry offers laser machining systems of all kinds for papers and metallised papers, e.g. the company Palegra in Berlin or the company Acsys in Lüdenscheid. Diode fibre lasers are e.g. manufactured by the company IPG Optonics in Burbach, Germany.
Currently, a typical near infrared diode machining laser is able to remove material at 1000 m/sec, i.e. 1 mm per μsec, at a pulse train frequency of 250 kHz, 9 ns pulses, and a power of 40 watts. Glass fibre cables connected to the laser with imaging optics coupled to their other ends allow a precise machining of paper surfaces at nearly arbitrary foci. In the case of natural cardstock of e.9. 170 μm thickness, to engrave the paper, up to ⅔ of its depth can be removed without smoke traces. Special papers such as coated or cast-coated papers require preliminary analyses. One requirement of inner liners or packing foils for the food industry is that they may not be perforated during the treatment.
In the area of production lines in the tobacco industry, speeds of e.g. 100 m/min to 180 m/min are used, resulting in a feed rate of 3 μm per μs in the latter case. A pulse train frequency of 250 kHz theoretically allows a material removal every 4 μsec. However, there exist packing machines working at lower speed of e.g. 60 m/min.
The surface of driven roller 3 is provided in a manner known per se with embossing elements 7, the latter including logos of all kinds and/or folding lines and/or further codes such as QR codes or the like. These elements are for example produced according to WO 2013156256 A1 or EP 2511088 to the same applicant. The symbols G and L represent such elements. Since feature setup 6 is provided in addition to the embossing rollers, no restrictions apply to the design of the embossing rollers. In this embodiment the rollers are synchronized by not shown gears or electronically.
Via deflecting roller 4, packing strip 8 reaches guide roller 5, where ID features 9 are applied, and subsequently passes between the two embossing rollers 2 and 3 where embossing elements 7 are embossed. The packing strip may previously have been provided with printing. The processed packing strip 8T provided with embossed elements 7E and ID features 9, subsequently reaches a cigarette packing station where it is separated and wrapped around a number of cigarettes. It follows that the application of the ID features is performed on-line in one process step with the embossing and synchronously to the cycle rate of the packing machine.
Feature setup 6 comprises a diode laser installation. Diode laser 10 is coupled to a glass fibre cable 11 that is connected to a fibre support 12 whose exit is provided with an optical system, see
For .one skilled in the art it is apparent that the position of the feature setup, i.e. before or after the embossing rollers, is not important for the treatment but that it is arranged where the space conditions are most suitable.
Embossing rollers 2 and 3 are only shown schematically and in a simplified manner here and stand for the embossing rollers manufactured according to the male-female system as described in EP 2 511 088 to the applicant of the present invention. In particular, such embossing rollers may also be provided with folding tools produced according to the male-female system. The embossed elements 7 shown on embossing roller 3 consist of raised male structures. Alternatively, teeth in the pin-up/pin-up configuration may be provided as they are e.g. described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,176,819 to the applicant of the present invention.
The different tooth types are e.g. also illustrated in WO 2009/155720 to the applicant where the teeth and tooth gaps are produced mechanically, whereas in WO 2013156256 Al to the applicant of the present invention, the rollers are produced by laser independently of each other according to the Pater-Mater system. Furthermore, EP 2 511 088 to the applicant discloses embossing rollers that are provided with folding tools produced also according to the Pater-Mater system.
In the present case, feature a has been produced by means of feature set up 29 according to
The following assumptions illustrate the theoretical sequence of operations: With an embossing speed of the packing strip of e.g. 12,000 cm/minute as it is usual in the tobacco industry, which corresponds to 2 μm per μsec, each one of feature positions P1-PN is passed in approx. 50 μsec. According to the preset coding, arbitrary ones of the intended feature positions are marked, i.e. pits are produced, see
In
It is possible to produce arbitrary, possibly differently arranged features redundantly on a second strip that is parallel to the first strip. The theoretical number of approx. 2 exp(n0) possibilities, with n=50 positions on one strip and n02×50=100 positions on two strips, is reduced by the choice of the coding algorithm in function of the desired redundancy or readout reliability, respectively. Redundant coding is usual for packages e.g. in order to compensate for damages or local staining of the surface.
If the laser operates instead through a rigidly mounted fibre that serves as the writing head through a unidimensional scanner scanning in the axial direction of the rollers, it is possible due to the simultaneous rotary motion of the guide roller to write on a rectangular surface of e.g. 1.5 cm×1.5 cm. The fixed x adjustment of the scanner head serves to preadjust the head in the correct position relative to the packing strip. In the scanner head, the laser beam is deflected, its deflexion angle being measured and electronically controlled. The simplest method for producing a scanning movement is to vary the orientation of a mirror on which the laser beam is reflected. In a spatial dimension, this may be achieved by a galvanometer drive.
Laser installations using scanners allow an on-line material removal in arbitrary locations to produce individually modified identification features, reliefs, emblems or other decorations on the packing strip. Thus it is e.g. possible to inexpensively produce inner liners with personalised designs, thereby potentially opening up new markets. An exemplary non limiting enumeration of possible visual content of the thus produced features includes relief-like logos, 3D effects, facial profiles, customised logos with section-wise variation possibilities, numbered visual content. OR codes or the like. These features may either be used as identification features also or mixed with the aforementioned identification features, as desired. Depending on the requirements, a visual, an aesthetic or an automated image evaluation for technical purposes will be implemented.
As a method for reading ID features 9, 9X or features 9L, 9S, e.g. the so-called white light interferometry can advantageously be used. The white light interferometry method uses the interferences of broadband light which, in contrast to laser light, has a short coherence length.
By moving the object to be measured along the x-axis at each position a map of the heights is taken for each pixel, which precision lies in the sub-micron region. It is thus possible to create a two or three dimensional topography of the object to be measured.
In this manner, the individual identification features 9, 9X or features 9L or 9S can be detected with utmost precision and decoded by means of suitable software.
Rather than by optical means, it may also be contemplated to read the features by other methods, e.g. by micro x-ray devices or by means of terahertz radiation, e.g. in the 300 GHz to 3 THz range, through the package. Terahertz radiation penetrates many materials such as paper or plastics as well as organic tissue, but has no ionizing effect because of the low photon energy in the range of few milli electron volts.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 15178077.2 | Jul 2015 | EP | regional |
| Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCT/IB2016/054421 | 7/25/2016 | WO | 00 |
