System for creating custom-made miniatures
OwnerDonald Spectorinventor
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system for converting a printable sheet of heat-shrinkable, synthetic plastic film material into a custom-made miniature having an image thereon of a selected individual. In this system, the face or figure of the selected individual is viewed by a video camera whose output signal is applied to a high-resolution TV monitor, on the screen of which is exhibited an image of the individual. The image is transferred from the monitor to an associated printer which impresses the image on the sheet in a scale appropriate to its dimensions. The sheet is then subjected to an elevated temperature, causing the sheet to shrink uniformly, and in doing so to markedly reduce the scale of the image thereon, thereby creating on a relatively thick substrate the desired miniature.
Claims7
A system for converting a printable sheet of heat-shrinkable, synthetic plastic film material having predetermined dimensions into a custom-made miniature of a selected individual, said system comprising:
- (a) means to create a two-dimensional image of said individual;
- (b) means to print said image on said sheet in a scale appropriate to the dimensions of the sheet;
- (c) means to subject said sheet to an elevated temperature for a period sufficient to cause said sheet to shrink and thicken to produce a substrate on which is printed a reduced scale image of said individual;
- and
- (d) means to cool and cure said substrate to create said miniature.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.