Lamina comprising cube corner elements and retroreflective sheeting
Assignee3M Innovative Properties Company
InventorKenneth L. Smith
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The present invention is directed to lamina(e) comprising cube corner elements, a tool comprising an assembly of laminae and replicas thereof. The invention further relates to retroreflective sheeting.
Claims51
A lamina comprising cube corner elements having faces formed from grooves wherein adjacent grooves range from being nominally parallel to nonparallel by less than 1°, have included angles that differ by at least 2°, and the included angles of the grooves are arranged in a repeating pattern.
A lamina comprising cube corner elements having faces formed from grooves wherein the faces intersect at a common peak height, adjacent grooves range from being nominally parallel to nonparallel by less than 1° and the included angles of adjacent grooves differ by at least 2°.
A lamina comprising cube corner elements having faces formed from grooves wherein adjacent grooves range from being nominally parallel to nonparallel by less than 1°, have included angles that differ by at least 2° and have bisector planes that range from being mutually nominally parallel to nonparallel by less than 1°.
A lamina comprising preferred geometry cube corner elements wherein at least a portion of the cube corner elements are canted having an alignment angle selected from alignment angles between 45° and 135°, alignment angles between 225° and 315°, and combinations thereof.
Retroreflective sheeting comprising a row of preferred geometry cube corner microstructures having faces defined by grooves wherein adjacent grooves in the row range from being nominally parallel to nonparallel by less than 1°, have included angles that differ by at least 2°, and the included angles of the side grooves are arranged in a repeating pattern.
Retroreflective sheeting comprising a row of cube corner elements having faces defined by grooves wherein the faces intersect at a common peak height, adjacent grooves in the row range from being nominally parallel to nonparallel by less than 1° and the included angles of adjacent side grooves differ by at least 2°.
Retroreflective sheeting comprising a row of cube corner elements having faces defined by grooves wherein adjacent grooves in the row range from being nominally parallel to nonparallel by less than 1°, have included angles that differ by at least 2° and have bisector planes that range from being mutually nominally parallel to nonparallel by less than 1°.
Retroreflective sheeting comprising a row of preferred geometry cube corner microstructures wherein a first cube corner element is canted having an alignment angle between 45° and 135° and a second adjacent cube is canted having an alignment angles between 225° and 315°.
Retroreflective sheeting comprising an array of preferred geometry cube corner elements that exhibit a uniformity index of at least 1 at an entrance angle of at least 30°.
Retroreflective sheeting comprising a pair of adjacent rows of preferred geometry cube corner elements wherein adjacent elements in a row have at least one dihedral edge that ranges from being nominally parallel to nonparallel by less than 1° and wherein the pair of rows comprise at least two types of matched pairs.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.