JPH0473713B2 - - Google Patents

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention (Technical Field) The present invention relates to a basic sheet of dry transfer material, and in particular, it is produced by printing and thermal transfer using a printing device such as a thermal transfer printer, typewriter, word processor, etc. The invention relates to a basic sheet in a dry transfer material.

(Prior art and its problems) Traditionally, instant lettering uses a dry transfer material or a sheet to arbitrarily receive a transferred image or indicia of characters, figures, etc. applied thereon. This is done by peeling it off and transferring it to the surface. The basic sheet on which the transferred image of this transfer material is formed may be a transparent or translucent plastic film alone, or
Alternatively, a film with a releasable coating provided on the film is used, but in this dry transfer material, an image is formed on the basic sheet by printing such as screen printing, and a pressure-sensitive adhesive is applied on top of the image. An adhesive layer is provided, and the adhesive force of the pressure-sensitive adhesive is used to transfer from the base sheet to the object to be transferred.
It is thought that the releasability of such a base sheet does not actually have to be so great.

In fact, the basic sheets of dry transfer materials cited in conventional examples include individual films such as PE, PET, and PS (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 133111/1983,
No. 51-53916, Special Publication No. 57-54313, No. 58-
50200, etc.), and even if a removable coating is provided, those with high releasability or poor wettability are not used (Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 53-1999).
100013, Special Publication No. 60-7774, etc.)
In Japanese Patent Publication No. 60-7774, it is made clear that although it is possible to apply a releasable coating to the base sheet, it is not normally necessary, and in Japanese Patent Publication No. 54-31405, Although silicone-based materials exhibit excellent release properties, they have been shown to be unsuitable because they cause printing ink to repel.

By the way, manufacturing the dry transfer material used for conventional instant lettering requires a large investment of money and time, so consumers are inevitably forced to purchase commercially available products. For this purpose, it is not only necessary to obtain transfer images of desired characters and figures, but also to purchase unnecessary characters and figures, which results in a lot of waste and a very high cost per character. Naru et al.
In some cases, the desired characters or figures may not be available and cannot be purchased. Moreover, words, phrases, sentences, etc. must be picked up letter by letter from such commercially available lettering transfer materials and transferred while aligning, which is extremely time-consuming and requires layout. It was difficult and difficult to finish beautifully.

For this reason, the present inventors used printing devices such as thermal transfer printers, typewriters, and word processors whose production volume has increased significantly in recent years.
We have separately proposed a method for producing a desired dry transfer material by printing and thermally transferring a desired transfer image onto a predetermined base sheet. That is, according to this dry transfer material manufacturing method using the thermal transfer method, consumers can easily create transferred images of desired characters, figures, etc. using a thermal transfer printer, typewriter, word processor, etc. Since only the (ink image) can be created on a predetermined basic sheet, unnecessary characters and figures, etc., unlike conventional ready-made lettering sheets are not generated, and therefore waste can be eliminated. As a result, the cost per letter can be advantageously reduced, and since lettering can be done freely, various shapes can be created, making it easy to create beautiful and waste-free transfer materials. Various excellent effects can be achieved.

However, in the dry transfer material for instant lettering produced by such a thermal transfer method, the image is provided by printing such as screen printing, or it is coated or printed in advance, as in conventional dry transfer materials. The manufacturing process is completely different from the one in which the photosensitive layer is exposed and developed, so the adhesion between the image and the basic sheet is fundamentally different, and the basic sheet of conventional dry transfer materials can be used as is. It could not be used as a basic sheet for transfer materials produced by thermal transfer methods. Of course, as a method for manufacturing dry transfer materials for instant lettering, the thermal transfer method has not been adopted at all so far, so there is also a basic sheet for thermal transfer used to manufacture dry transfer materials for instant lettering. So far, no proposals have been made.

(Object of the Invention) The present invention has been made against this background, and its first object is to advantageously produce a dry transfer material using a thermal transfer method. Our goal is to provide the basic sheets that we can.

A second object of the present invention is to provide a basic sheet that can effectively pressure-sensitively transfer a firmly fixed ink image to a transfer object by thermal transfer.

Furthermore, the third object of the present invention is to use a base sheet with a specific surface property so that the ink image firmly fixed by thermal transfer can be
The object of the present invention is to enable reliable pressure-sensitive transfer from such a basic sheet to a transfer object.

(Solution Means) In order to achieve this object, the present invention applies pressure to an ink image thermally transferred by a thermal transfer method from a surface opposite to the surface to which the ink image is thermally transferred. For the basic sheet of dry transfer material for retransfer to the receiver of
It is characterized by having a thickness of 50 to 200 μm and a smooth surface having a contact angle with water of at least 95°.

Note that such a contact angle in the base sheet of the dry transfer material according to the present invention can be achieved even with the film alone, preferably by using polyethylene, polypropylene, or fluororesin as the material of the base sheet. However, this can be advantageously realized in particular by using paper, metal foil or plastic film as the base material of the basic sheet and forming a releasable coating layer made of silicone resin on the surface thereof.

(Specific structure/effect) By the way, in the present invention as described above, when producing a dry transfer material, instead of forming an image on a basic sheet by printing such as screen printing as in the past, a thermal transfer method is used. An ink image (transfer image) of desired characters, figures, etc. is formed by a printing device such as a printer, typewriter, word processor, or the like. In image formation using such a thermal transfer method, ink is selectively melted at a predetermined portion of the ink ribbon by heat from a heat-sensitive head or by heat generation of the ink ribbon itself when the ink ribbon itself is energized, and the ink is transferred onto a basic sheet. Afterwards, by allowing the ink to cool naturally, a strongly fixed ink image can be obtained.

Therefore, in order to pressure-sensitively transfer the image of the dry transfer material formed in this way by applying pressure by rubbing or the like from the back side of the base sheet, as the base sheet, This does not mean that any sheet material can be used, but it is necessary to select a basic sheet suitable for image formation by thermal transfer and pressure-sensitive transfer of such images, and in making this selection, there are some considerations. As a condition, in the present invention, first of all, attention was paid to the wettability of the basic sheet surface. In order to cleanly and reliably pressure-sensitive transfer a thermal ink image that has been exposed and firmly fixed, the base sheet must have low wettability and good release properties.In this sense, the present invention provides The basic sheet is constructed to have a surface texture with a contact angle to water of at least 95°, preferably 105° or more.

Moreover, in the basic sheet according to the present invention,
Regarding the smoothness of its surface, it needs to be sufficiently smooth to avoid the anchoring effect of thermal ink and to ensure that pressure-sensitive transferred characters are transferred neatly to the designated receiving surface. It is desirable to have a certain degree of flexibility so that pressure can be applied uniformly and locally during pressure transfer. but,
It goes without saying that such a basic sheet needs to have sufficient mechanical strength in manufacturing and handling. In order to obtain these properties, it is desirable that the basic sheet has a thickness of 50 to 200 μm, preferably 70 to 150 μm.

In addition, in order to accurately transfer the image onto the transfer object, it is preferable that the base sheet be transparent or semi-transparent so as to facilitate positioning during pressure-sensitive transfer later. It is most desirable that the sheet be translucent so that it is easy to check whether the transferred image has been transferred.

If a basic sheet is selected in consideration of the above, it becomes possible to effectively pressure-sensitively transfer an image on a dry transfer material produced by thermal transfer onto a transfer target. However, it goes without saying that the basic sheet is subject to restrictions not only during such pressure-sensitive transfer but also when producing a dry transfer material by heat-sensitive transfer.

In particular, since transfer materials are often created by transferring ink onto a base sheet through a platen using heat from a thermal head, etc., it is important that the base sheet easily passes through the platen and that the image can be thermally transferred neatly. To do this, the base sheet must have a surface of 50 to 200 μm, preferably 70 μm, which can advantageously ensure a good level of surface smoothness and less unevenness, as well as appropriate flexibility.
It needs to have a thickness of ~150 μm.

The basic sheet according to the present invention having all of these desirable properties is generally a polyethylene film, a polypropylene film, or
There are individual films of fluorine-based films made of fluororesins such as ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene copolymer and tetrafluoroethylene-hexafluoroethylene copolymer, and paper; metal foil; polyethylene terephthalate, polyethylene, polypropylene, nylon. , polyimide, fluororesin,
PVC resin, polysulfone, polycarbonate,
A plastic film obtained from ABS resin or the like, on which a silicone resin coating layer is formed as a releasable coating layer, is preferably used.

In addition, the ink ribbon used to thermally transfer a desired transfer image onto such a base sheet is
Used in printing devices such as ordinary thermal transfer printers, typewriters, word processors, etc.
There is no problem even if it is coated with wax-based ink, but in particular, use an ink ribbon with a two-layer structure consisting of a transferability adjustment layer and an ink layer, which has further improved heat-sensitive transferability and pressure-sensitive transferability. This is desirable. This transferability adjustment layer is provided on the ink layer as a top coat layer, and has higher heat-sensitive adhesiveness, hardness, viscosity, and cohesive force than the ink layer. The heat-sensitive transfer properties to the sheet surface are significantly improved, and by providing the ink layer with pressure-sensitive adhesive properties, the pressure-sensitive transfer properties of the transferred image formed by heat-sensitive transfer to the receptor are also good. It is possible to do this.

Note that in order to effectively thermally transfer a target transfer image such as a character or a figure onto the base sheet according to the present invention using a predetermined thermal transfer type printing device, it is necessary to reduce the heat generated by the head of the printing device. The position and shape of the body, the winding torque of the ink ribbon, the head pressing pressure, the head mounting angle, the head energy, the printing speed, etc. are adjusted as appropriate.

The dry transfer material produced by thermal transfer in this way has been subjected to surface conditioning such as reducing the wettability of the surface of the basic sheet, so that the thermal ink image that firmly adheres to the surface of the dry transfer material is A desired transfer image can be easily transferred to a predetermined portion of an object to be adhered by the pressure-sensitive adhesive force of the ink itself without providing an adhesive layer on the ink.

(Examples) Some examples of the present invention will be shown below to clarify the present invention more specifically, but the present invention is not limited in any way by such descriptions. It goes without saying that it is nothing.

In addition to the following examples and the above-mentioned specific description, the present invention includes various changes, modifications, and changes based on the knowledge of those skilled in the art, as long as they do not depart from the spirit of the present invention. It should be understood that improvements and the like may be made.

Example 1 A releasable film having the following composition was coated on a PET (polyethylene terephthalate) film having a thickness of 100 μm to obtain a base sheet with a smooth surface and a contact angle with water of 108 to 110°. . Peelable coating layer composition (parts by weight) Silicone resin [KS- manufactured by Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd.
841] 10 Curing agent [PL-7 manufactured by Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd.] 0.3 Toluene 90 Ink was applied onto the base sheet thus obtained using a controlled thermal transfer typewriter (EP-43 manufactured by Brother Industries, Ltd.). A dry transfer material having a desired transferred image was obtained by thermal transfer. and,
When this dry transfer material was used for pressure-sensitive transfer onto a transfer object such as paper or plastic, a beautiful transferred image could be obtained.

On the other hand, PET that is not coated with a releasable film as described above
Using a film (contact angle with water: 70-75°),
Similarly to the above, when a dry transfer material was prepared using a heat-sensitive transfer method and was pressure-sensitively transferred onto a predetermined transfer object, it was not possible to obtain a clean transferred image.

Example 2 Using a nylon 66 film with a thickness of 100 μm,
A releasable film having the composition shown below was coated thereon to obtain a basic sheet having a smooth surface and a contact angle with water of 108 to 110°. Peelable coating layer composition (parts by weight) Silicone resin [KS- manufactured by Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd.
774] 10 Curing agent [PL-4 manufactured by Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd.] 0.3 Toluene 90 And, using this obtained basic sheet, a dry transfer material obtained in the same manner as in Example 1 was also clean. However, it was possible to create a transfer image on the target material, but using a nylon 66 stand-alone film (contact angle with water: 65 to 70°) that does not form such a releasable film as a basic sheet. When used, the transfer form was poor and a clear transferred image could not be obtained.

Example 3 A dry transfer material was produced in the same manner as in Example 1 using a high-density polyethylene film having a thickness of 100 μm. The obtained dry transfer material also gave a clear transferred image, similar to that of Example 1.

Example 4 A 100 μm thick high-density polyethylene film with a contact angle of 95 to 100 degrees with water was used as the base sheet, and a thermal transfer type writer (EP-43 manufactured by Brother Industries, Ltd.) was placed on top of it. The ink was transferred thermally to obtain the desired dry transfer material. Next, when the obtained dry transfer material was subjected to pressure-sensitive transfer onto a transfer object such as paper or plastic, a beautiful transferred image could be obtained.

Example 5 A 100 μm thick polypropylene film with a contact angle of 95 to 100° with water was used as a base sheet, and ink was thermally transferred onto it in the same manner as in Example 4 to obtain the desired dry transfer material. I got it. The dry transfer material thus obtained was also capable of producing a beautiful transferred image on the object to be transferred.

Example 6 A 200 μm thick ethylene-tetrafluoroethylene copolymer film with a contact angle of 112° with water was used as a base sheet, and thermal transfer was performed in the same manner as in Example 4 to produce a dry transfer material. After that, when the obtained dry transfer material was further subjected to pressure sensitive transfer, good results similar to those of Example 4 were obtained.

(Effects of the Invention) As is clear from the above description, when producing a dry transfer material using a printing device such as a thermal transfer printer, typewriter, word processor, etc., as a basic sheet to be printed, According to the present invention, by using a base sheet having a predetermined thickness and a smooth surface texture with a contact angle of at least 95° with respect to water, it is possible to improve heat-sensitive transfer properties and transfer properties when preparing a dry transfer material. It has become possible to obtain a dry transfer material with good pressure-sensitive transfer properties, and this is where the great industrial significance of the present invention lies.

Claims (1)

[Scope of Claims] 1. Dry transfer for retransferring an ink image thermally transferred by a thermal transfer method to an arbitrary receptor by applying pressure from the surface opposite to the surface on which the ink image was thermally transferred. 1. A basic sheet of a dry transfer material, characterized in that the basic sheet has a thickness of 50 to 200 μm and a smooth surface with a contact angle to water of at least 95°. 2. The base sheet for a dry transfer material according to claim 1, wherein the contact angle is achieved by using polyethylene, polypropylene, or fluororesin as the material of the base sheet. 3 The contact angle is achieved by using paper, metal foil, or plastic film as a base material for the base sheet, and forming a peelable coating layer made of silicone resin on the surface thereof. A basic sheet of the dry transfer material described in Scope 1.