This invention relates to a method of and an apparatus for mounting and printing on swatches or colored chips on sheets.
In U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,061,521; 6,030,481; and 6,086,694 there are disclosed methods and apparatus for manufacture of a colored chip or colored swatch bearing sheet, e.g., a color chart comprising a base sheet on which are mounted several adhesively attached colored chips with the color of each chip having been made by a particular colored paint.
As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,061,521, sheets are moved intermittently through a machine to receive a number of colored chips thereon with the sheets being stopped at adhesive station where a rotating adhesive cylinder applies adhesive at the chip receiving locations. At a swatch applying station various colored chips are severed from colored ribbons and are applied by a swatch applying cylinder to the respective adhesive spots to adhere the chips to the sheet. Often the chips are adhered close to printing on the sheet or in a preprinted box on the sheet and the chips are placed very precisely on the sheet particularly with respect to the printing. The sheets may vary from relatively thin paper that is about 0.0035 to 0.0040 inch thick as well as to paper board that is about 0.008 to 0.010 inch thick. Often the swatches vary in area, thickness of the swatch material and the pattern of their deposition on a sheet.
A U.S. Pat. No. 6,086,694 discloses a method and apparatus for the manufacture of chip bearing sheets with the swatches being adhered to a web which is usually preprinted and which is cut into sheets after all the swatches have been applied to the web for a given sheet length.
Heretofore, it has been desired to print on the colored chips adhered to the sheet by whatever process, such as the sheet process disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,061,521 or in a web machine patent disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,086,694. If the colored chips were to have any printing thereon, the sheets bearing the chips were taken to a remote off-line printing machine and printing was done on the chips at the remote location.
The sheets leaving one of the machines described above were usually in the form of either rectangular or square shapes and if it was desired to change the shape of one or more of the chips, the sheets would taken to an off-line die cutting system which would remove the excess scrap material about the desired shape. That is the die cutting system had dies to cut the chips to provide curves, circles, arcs, etc. on the chip with the excess material cut from the rectangular portion of the sheet being scrap and removed.