Re-transfer printing machine and method thereof

A re-transfer printing machine comprising:

• an ink film having a sublimation-ink area of at least one sublimation ink and an invisible-ink area of an invisible ink;
• an intermediate-transfer film having a protecting layer and an ink receptor layer laminated on the protecting layer to enable the sublimation ink and the invisible ink to be received therein;
• the ink receptor layer having a plurality of transfer areas corresponding to the area of an object to be printed;
• a transfer mechanism for transferring the sublimation ink and the invisible ink to the plurality of transfer areas segmentalized in the ink receptor layer thereby to form a sublimation-ink image of the sublimation ink and an invisible-ink image of the invisible ink in the ink receptor layer, based on a print image for the object to be printed;
• a re-transfer mechanism for re-transferring the sublimation-ink image and the invisible-ink image to the object thereby to form the print image thereon;
• a controller for controlling respective operations of the transfer mechanism and the re-transfer mechanism;
• and
• an overlap detecting unit connected to the controller to detect whether the print image for the object contains an overlapping between the sublimation-ink image and the invisible-ink image or not, wherein
• when the overlap detecting unit detects that the print image contains the overlapping, the controller allows the transfer mechanism to transfer the sublimation-ink image and the invisible-ink image to different transfer areas in the receptor layer, and
• when the overlap detecting unit detects that the print image does not contain the overlapping, the controller allows the transfer mechanism to transfer both the sublimation-ink image and the invisible-ink image to a same transfer area in the receptor layer.