Printing apparatus
AssigneeShowa Aluminum Can Corporation
InventorsShinichi Ojima, Kazunori Ikeda, Tetsuo Kashiwazaki, Asumi Suwa
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A printing apparatus including a can body conveyance unit, an image forming unit, a light irradiation unit and one or more other can body stop locations. Light for curing an image on a can body is inhibited from reaching the image forming unit. An upstream side restricting wall (31) is positioned on the upstream side, namely, the side on which an ink jet head (240) is provided, of a can body (10) when the can body (10) is stopped at a mandrel stop location (811) or light irradiation stop location (811). The upstream side restricting wall (31) is thereby positioned between the can body (10) and the ink jet head (240), and ultraviolet light is restricted from heading toward the ink jet head (240).
Claims23
A printing apparatus comprising:
- a can body conveyance unit that sequentially conveys can bodies and, every time each of the can bodies reaches each of a predetermined plurality of can body stop locations, temporarily stops the can body;
- an image forming unit that is installed at any of the plurality of can body stop locations and performs image formation onto the can body positioned at the can body stop location;
- and
- a light irradiation unit that is installed at another can body stop location positioned on a downstream side of the can body stop location, where the image forming unit is installed, in a conveyance direction of the can bodies, and performs light irradiation to an image formed onto the can body by the image forming unit, wherein
- one or more other can body stop locations are provided between an image formation stop location, which is the can body stop location where the image forming unit is installed, and a light irradiation stop location, which is the can body stop location where the light irradiation unit is installed.
A printing apparatus comprising:
- a plurality of can body support members that are provided rotatably to support can bodies;
- an image forming unit that performs image formation onto the can bodies supported by the can body support members;
- and
- a transmission member that performs circulating movement through each of the plurality of can body support members to transmit a rotational driving force to each of the plurality of can body support members.
A printing apparatus comprising:
- a plurality of image forming units, each of which ejects ink onto an outer circumferential surface of a rotating can body to form an image on the outer circumferential surface;
- and
- a moving unit that moves a can body through each of the plurality of image forming units while rotating the can body,
- wherein
- a number of rotations of the can body during a period from starting to move the can body from one of two of the image forming units adjacent to each other in a moving direction of the can body to reaching the other of the two image forming units becomes an integer.
A printing apparatus comprising:
- a plurality of image forming units, each of which ejects ink onto an outer circumferential surface of a rotating can body to form an image on the outer circumferential surface;
- a moving unit that moves and stops a can body to and at each of the plurality of image forming units to cause the can body to pass through each of the plurality of image forming units;
- and
- a rotating unit that rotates a can body after the can body is stopped at each of the plurality of image forming units by the moving unit, wherein
- each of the plurality of image forming units starts image formation onto the can body after the can body is rotated a predetermined number of times by the rotating unit.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.