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US 5,165,336 AGranted
Method and apparatus for making printed elastic bands
AssigneeAlliance Rubber Company
InventorRichard R. Spencer
Life of this patent
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AssigneeAlliance Rubber Company
InventorRichard R. Spencer
Estimating the term…
Printed elastic bands are made by piercing, evacuating and flattening an elastic tubing and washing and scrubbing and drying the upper surface of the tubing, aligning a tubing on a conveyor and moving the tubing upward toward a printing head and quickly downward away from the printing head while maintaining the tubing flattened. The printing is devolatilized and cured while the tubing continues to move to the cutoff point. Nip rollers drive a tubing onto a cutoff platen, a final roller near the edge of the platen has a higher surface speed than the nip rollers to flatten the tubing. Printing on the tubing is sensed and rotating knives are sensed and the speed of the nip rollers is controlled to cut the tubing between the printed areas. Severed printed bands are removed by vacuum and are discharged from a cyclone separator.
The method of making printed elastic bands comprising feeding an elastic tubing into a perforating apparatus, perforating the tubing, exhausting fluid from within the tubing, flattening the tubing, cleaning the tubing, drying the tubing, continuously conveying the tubing, keeping the tubing flat, aligning the tubing, printing the tubing, aligning the printed tubing, driving the tubing, drying and curing the printed image, and cutting off lengths of the printed tubing into printed elastic bands and removing the printed elastic bands, wherein the steps of feeding, perforating, exhausting, flattening, cleaning, conveying, printing, driving and cutting further comprise operating synchronous type servo motors to perform the steps and further comprise coordinating the motors with a processor.
Apparatus for manufacturing printed elastic bands comprising collapsing means for collapsing an elastic tubing, flattening means for maintaining the tubing flattened throughout the apparatus, cleaning means for cleaning an upper surface of the tubing for removing ink-adhesion inhibitors, aligning means for aligning the tubing for properly centered printing, positioning means for positioning the tubing for receiving printed images, printing means for printing images on the tubing, devolatilizing and curing means for devolatizing and curing ink images printed on the tubing, high speed cutting means for cutting ends of the tubing between printed images and discharging means for discharging the finished products as printed elastic bands, wherein the collapsing means, flattening means, cleaning means, printing means and cutting means comprise synchronized servo motors connected to the means for driving the means and further comprising control means connected to the motors for controlling speeds of the motors and processor means connected to the controls for interrelating speeds of the motors.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.