DIGITALLY PRINTED PRODUCTS AND PROCESS

摘要

A process for manufacturing three-dimensionally shaped polymeric sheets and laminates with color-matched digitally printed full color ink jet images. A flexible thermoformable polymeric baseweb is placed in an ink jet printer an d a solvent-based (non-aqueous) digital printing ink is applied directly to th e baseweb, in the absence of an ink receptive layer on the baseweb, to form a decorative pattern in multiple colors in a single pass through the printer. The finished product can be thermoformed or injection molded to a three- dimensional shape. A protective topcoat can be laminated to the digitally printed sheet prior to the thermoforming and/or injection molding step. A process for making color-matched products comprises producing a software- driven image of a pattern on a screen representing a standard color print pattern, evaluating and adjusting the standard displayed on the screen using software-driven image related adjustments for hue, contrast, lightness/darkness, etc.; producing a test print by applying a decorative pattern to the baseweb by a digital ink jet printer and making optional software-driven image-related adjustments in the test print to color match t he test print image to the standard; and when the adjusted test print image is acceptable, passing an image-related outputto the digital ink jet printer fo r printing a decorative print color-matched to the accepted onscreen standard.