Heat transfer labeling machine with hot air treatment stations

Abstract

A transfer label machine has a post treatment station for exposing newly applied labels to heat in order to finish and gloss out the label. The heat is applied through a nozzle coupled to a hot air supply system that includes a blower, ductwork, and a heating element disposed in the airflow. A temperature probe measures temperature of the air flow and an IR sensor measures the resulting temperature of containers on which the labels have been applied. A programmable logic controller (PLC) is programmed with proportional integral derivative (PID) algorithms to control the blower speed and the heating element to provide the appropriate amount of heat for the labeling or processing speed at which the labeling machine is operating. A vision system can confirm the quality of label after the post treatment heating. In the event of a machine jam, the blower and/or heating element can be turned off or the air can be shunted away from the containers to reduce greatly the likelihood of a fire, which has occurred with prior art flame based post treatment heating units.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.