Dye transfer‐type thermal printing systems have been developed that yield full color prints with excellent tone and color reproducibility. However, utilization efficiency of the recording materials has been poor. Therefore, an experimental evaluation of the materials and the structure of the dye transfer‐type thermally sensitive sheets (dye transfer sheet and color receiving sheet) was performed. It was found that an economical n‐multiple utilization mode printing system, in which the relative speed of the dye transfer sheet to the color receiving sheet is maintained at 1/n (n ≥ 1), can be realized.
The dye transfer sheet is composed of a base sheet and a coloring material layer. The base sheet is thermally stabilized by adding a heat resisting and slipping layer on the back of the sheet. The coloring material layer is composed of a dye, adhesive resin and spherical thermal resin spacers. A color developing layer, which contains a heat resisting and slipping UV sensitive color developing resin, is added to the surface of the color receiving base sheet. In the printing experiment, the dye transfer and color receiving sheets were moved by using the surfaces of spacer particles and the coloring material layer.
This printing system showed stable operation at n = 12, where the printing density was independent of n. It was found that this method provides a better printing density than the system in which printing is carried out for N times at a constant speed (n = 1).
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