Printing device or printing method
AssigneeSchott Glas
InventorsMichael Zimmer, Bernd Schultheis
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A printing method using at least one transfer roller, whose roller surface is charged with a coating material, for example a toner. The coating material is directly or indirectly transferred from the transfer roller to a support surface of a transfer element, before being transferred at least partially from the transfer element to a workpiece to be coated. According to this invention, the transfer element has a stretching element which forms the support surface and the support surface is stretched in the direction of the surface by a stretching device. This ensures that this method can also be used to easily coat 3-dimensional surfaces which are curved in space.
Claims17
In a printing method having at least one transfer roller with a surface charged with a coating material wherein the coating material is applied to a carrier surface of a transfer element, and wherein the coating material is applied at least partially to a workpiece to be coated by the transfer element, the improvement comprising:
- the transfer element including an expansion element (22) forming the carrier surface, and the carrier surface expandable by an expansion device (30) including a die (33) having a curved die face (34) that corresponds to a curved surface (12) of the workpiece (11).
In a printing device with at least one transfer roller including a surface that can be charged at least partially with a toner to form an image, wherein the image is transferred to a carrier surface of an endless tape of a transfer element and imprinted to a workpiece, the improvement comprising:
- an expansion device (30) including a die (33) for pressing the endless tape (22) against the workpiece (11), the workpiece (11) having a curved surface (12);
- and
- the die (33) including a curved die face (34) that matches the workpiece surface (12) to be imprinted.
A printing device for applying images to workpieces, the printing device comprising:
- at least one electrostatically chargeable transfer roller (24) including a surface that can be charged at least partially with a toner (26);
- an endless tape (22) having a carrier surface, wherein the toner (26) can be applied to the carrier surface by the transfer roller (24);
- and
- an expansion device including a die (33) for pressing the endless tape (22) against each of the workpieces (11) and transferring the toner to a curved surface (12) of each workpiece (11), wherein the die (33) includes a curved die face (34) that correspondingly matches the work piece curved surface (12).
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.