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US 12,369,673 B2Granted
Printing over stitching
AssigneeNIKE, Inc.
InventorsKassio Figur, Bruce J. Kilgore, Christina M. Wood
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Stitching is applied to a shoe or shoe component and then printed. The stitching may be formed from a continuous thread. After printing, a portion of the continuous thread may have a different color or appearance from other portion(s) of the continuous thread.
Claims9
A system for processing multiple shoe uppers during a shoe manufacturing process, the system comprising:
- a conveyance system configured to shift a continuous sheet of substrate material comprising a plurality of flat pattern uppers thereon along a manufacturing line;
- a stitching apparatus configured to, for each flat pattern upper forming part of the continuous sheet of substrate material, stitch a continuous thread onto the flat pattern upper in alignment with one or more distinctive features of the flat pattern upper;
- and
- a printing apparatus configured to, for each flat pattern upper forming part of the continuous sheet of substrate material, print a color and/or a visual pattern on at least a portion of the continuous thread after it has been stitched to the flat pattern upper.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.