Method of curing a compressible printing blanket and a compressible printing blanket produced thereby

摘要

A laminated printing blanket having compressible and resilient properties and a method for its production are provided. The compressible characteristics are provided by disposing an intermediate layer having substantially uniformly distributed voids of substantially uniform size between the base layer and the surface layer of the printing blanket. The voids of the compressible intermediate layer are formed by introducing microcapsules into an elastomeric compound formulated for production of the intermediate layer, and by vulcanizing the intermediate layer at a temperature below the melting point of the microcapsules to a degree sufficient to fix the microcapsules in place within the structure of the intermediate layer. A final vulcanizing step completes the curing of all layers to produce a laminated unitary blanket.