Flexible endless printing band

摘要

A wide endless flexible band (10) is molded on a flat core blade (12) with one group of laterally extending rows of outwardly projecting printing characters (16) molded on one side of the core blade between a set of laterally extending notched guide bars (32). The notches within the guide bars are used to align the wide endless band on a rotary cylindrical arbor (40) precisely with a set of spaced cutters (44) which slit the wide band at laterally spaced intervals into a plurality of relatively narrow endless printing bands. The wide endless band is also molded with a second group of raised characters (14) which correspond to the printing characters and are positioned on the other side of the core blade between a set of laterally extending continuous guide bars (24). The continuous guide bars have outer surfaces which are flush with the outer surfaces of the raised characters and provide for precisely guiding a member (28) which removes a coating of color contrasting material from the outer surfaces of the characters to make them visually readable.