Gerber Scientific Products, Inc.

Brian H Lis

Raymond J MacQueen, Jr

Kenneth O Wood

Charles M Hevenor

William A Loos

William J Tortora

Edward M Oscarson

Daniel G Binnall

John K White

Kurt J Ehrhardt

David M Mindek

Roy Douglas Downey

Michael J Banavige

James Raymond Parys

Alden J Hay

William J Stevenson, Iii

William T Chase

Disclosed are the following: a wide format thermal printer for printing a multicolor graphic product on a printing sheet; a vacuum workbed for supporting a sheet material for performing work operations, such as cutting, printing or plotting, thereon; a replaceable donor sheet assembly, which includes a memory, for use with a thermal printer; methods and apparatus for improved thermal printing, including methods and apparatus for conserving donor sheet and reducing the amount of time required to print a multicolor graphic product; a thermal printhead including a memory; and methods and apparatus for the alignment of a sheet material for printing or performing other work operations on the sheet material. The wide format thermal printer can include provision for the automatic loading of cassettes of donor sheet from a cassette storage rack. The vacuum workbed can include provision for determining the size of the sheet material supported by the workbed, and for controlling the suction applied to the apertures in a worksurface of the workbed. Also disclosed are methods and apparatus for controlling the tension of the donor sheet during printing with a wide format thermal printer.

Wide format thermal printer

A laminated web is used for etching characters, symbols or other shapes initially scribed in a layer of stencil sheet material including one of the layers of the web and the scribed stencil sheet is subsequently separated from the remaining web and used in an electrochemical etching process. The web is adapted to be used in an automatic sign maker wherein it is scribed on automatically as a result of instructions issued from a controller and the scribed markings are then used as a negative image in the etching process of an article surface.

Method of using a web for etching of a surface

Growing community of inventors

West Hartford, CT, United States of America

Brian H Lis