Cartridge-free stacks of slide elements
AssigneeJohnson & Johnson Clinical Diagnostics, Inc.
InventorsMaurice A. Kildal, Frank A. Richardson, Claude E. Monsees
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A stack of plastic articles and a process of forming the stack are disclosed. Preferably the stack is of heat-fusible plastic slide elements for use in a diagnostic analyzer, the elements being temporarily and non-destructively fused together so that the stack can be used free of a cartridge. In another embodiment, the stack can be of any plastic article temporarily fused to adjacent elements, one side edge of each element bearing a colorant and another bearing no colorant, so that a bar code for the stack is inherently formed simply by rotating each element to project outwardly the colored side edge or the side edge lacking colorant, prior to fusing the elements together.
Claims4
A stack of slide-like test elements assembled together, said stack comprising
- heat-fusible plastic frames of generally planar configuration, disposed in the stack one above another, the stack having at least one side face,
- means for temporarily holding said frames together, along at least a common side edge of said frames,
- and a bar-code extending along said at least one side face of said stack, said bar-code comprising colored bars and white spaces that extend generally parallel to said planar configuration of said frames,
- said white spaces comprising a white side edge of at least one of said frames that has another side edge not aligned with said one stack side, that is at least partially colored,
- so that said colored bar or said white space of said bar-code is determined by rotating each slide element about a center point to place either said colored side edge or a white side edge at said one stack side face.
A temporary stack of plastic articles individually releasable from the stack, and bearing bar coded information, the stack comprising
- a plurality of individual articles each comprising at least two exposable side edges, one of said edges having an exposed colorant in at least a portion of its surface and the other of said edges being substantially free of colorant,
- said articles being temporarily fused to each other so that said one side edges bearing said exposed colorant are placed in the stack with said other, colorless side edges so as to inherently form said bar-coded information by said colored edges alternating with said colorless edges in the sequence of said coded information.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.