Photoprinting process and apparatus for exposing paste-consistency photopolymers
OwnerDonald F. Sullivaninventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Paste-consistency photopolymer is imaged onto printed wiring boards by coating the board overall and positioning the photographic film over the board in register and off-contact. A resilient blade is pressed against the phototool at one end of the board and drawn across the surface, thus facing the photographic film into intimate contact with the photopolymer and purging all air therebetween. Mounted on the resilient blade aft of leading edge is a shuttered tubular lamp which hardens the photopolymer where the photographic film is clear, so that in a single pass the photographic film is sequentially mated and photopolymer exposed, to produce line widths unmatched by competing dry film systems and at speeds of 0.5 feet per second.
Claims11
A process for contacting two air-impermeable sheets, one having a photo image thereon, in a sandwich with a photopolymer layer therebetween comprising the steps of,
- coating one said sheet with said photopolymer,
- placing one said sheet on a smooth surface,
- disposing the second sheet adjacent to and spaced slightly from the first sheet with the coating therebetween,
- scanning a resilient member along the second sheet to force the sheets into contact to remove air and smooth the coating into a coating of uniform thickness,
- scanning a light source to follow said resilient member and thereby expose and harden the photopolymer in a pattern produced by said photo image, and
- disposing a liquid coolant on the upper surface of the second sheet during scanning in a position between the blade and the light source.
A process of producing printed graphic images using photopolymers, comprising the steps of,
- providing two sheets, at least one being flexible and one having a photo image on one surface thereof,
- disposing a first of said sheets on a flat surface,
- depositing on said first of said film sheets a photoactive coating of unexposed photopolymer,
- superimposing on said coating a flexible said sheet to establish a sandwich with the photopolymer coating therebetween with the photo image disposed adjacent to the photopolymer coating,
- scanning across the superimposed flexible sheet with a resilient member to establish between the two sheets an unexposed photopolymer coating of uniform thickness with air removed from between the sheets.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.