Eastman-kodak Company

Industrial Technology Research Institute

Eastman Kodak

Carolyn Rae Ellinger

Shelby Forrester Nelson

Yonglin Xie

Joseph Jech, Jr

David Howard Levy

Qing Yang

Todd Mathew Spath

Michael Alan Marcus

Hrishikesh Vijaykumar Panchawagh

Thomas W Palone

Michael G Shaughnessy

Maria J Lehmann

Lee William Tutt

Kevin Edward Spaulding

Mark Edward Irving

Lyn Marie Irving

Jeremy M Grace

Paul James Kane

William Yurich Fowlkes

Kathleen M Vaeth

Jason D Steadman

Thomas Nathaniel Tombs

James Alan Katerberg

James D Huffman

Keith B Kahen

Kurt DeLance Sieber

Christopher B Liston

Christopher R Morton

Douglas Edward Garman

Ali G Lopez

Roland Robert Schindler, Ii

Philip J Smith

Mitchell Stewart Burberry

Diane Carol Freeman

Timothy John Young

Peter Jerome Cowdery-Corvan

Glenn M Brown

Walter Harold Isaac

Jess B Hendricks, Iii

Vincent J Flow

Gary A Smith

Mark D Evans

Patrick W Webber

Cynthia A Fitzgerald

Lynn M Irving

Ali Gerardo Lopez

Jr Joseph Jech

An ink tray insert is adapted to be inserted into a conventional ink tray in a printing system. The ink tray insert includes a bottom surface having an outer profile that substantially conforms to an inner profile of a bottom surface of the conventional ink tray, and left and right side walls that extend upwards from left and right edges of the bottom surface, respectively. Bearing saddles are mounted on the left and right side walls adapted to receive bearings mounted on a shaft of a fountain roller, the ink tray insert being adapted to supply ink to the fountain roller in an ink transfer zone. A cross-track width of the ink tray insert between the left and right side walls is less than a cross-track width of the conventional ink tray.

Ink tray insert

An inking system is used to transfer a plurality of different inks to an anilox roller in a flexographic printing plate in a flexographic printing system. A fountain roller system including a plurality of coaxial fountain roller elements, each fountain roller element having an ink transfer zone with an ink transfer zone radius, wherein the ink transfer zone radii for the plurality of fountain roller elements are the same. A segmented ink tray includes a plurality of ink tray segments, wherein each fountain roller element is mounted within a corresponding ink tray segment. Each fountain roller element is adapted to receive ink from the corresponding ink tray segment and transfer the received ink to a corresponding zone of the anilox roller.

Inking system with plurality of fountain roller elements

An inking system is used to transfer a plurality of different inks to an anilox roller in a flexographic printing plate in a flexographic printing system. A fountain roller includes a plurality of ink transfer zones separated by recessed zones, and a segmented ink tray includes a plurality of ink tray segments corresponding to each of the ink transfer zones, wherein the fountain roller is positioned such that the ink transfer zones contact the anilox roller. Each ink transfer zone of the fountain roller is adapted to receive ink from the corresponding ink tray segment and transfer the received ink to a corresponding zone of the anilox roller.

Inking system with segmented fountain roller

A thin film deposition system includes a vacuum-preloaded gas bearing deposition head positioned in an external environment having an ambient pressure, the deposition head having an output face including a plurality of source openings through which gaseous materials are supplied and one or more exhaust openings. An exhaust pressure at the exhaust openings is less than ambient pressure, and a source pressure at the source openings is greater than that at the exhaust openings, with the pressure at the outermost source openings being greater than ambient pressure. A motion control system moves a substrate unit over the output face in the in-track direction without constraining its motion in a direction normal to the output face to a point where a center of gravity of the substrate unit is beyond the first edge of the output face.

Deposition system with vacuum pre-loaded deposition head

A thin film deposition system includes a web guide system having a plurality of web guides defining a web transport path for the web of substrate. The web guide system includes a moveable portion including first and second moveable-position web guides. A web transport control system advances the web of substrate along the web transport path at a web advance velocity. A deposition head is located along the web transport path between the first and second moveable-position web guides. A motion actuator system synchronously moves a position of the first and second moveable-position web guides such that they move forward and backward according to a defined oscillating motion pattern while maintaining a constant distance between the first and second moveable-position web guides, thereby causing a portion of the web of media adjacent to the deposition head to move forward and backward in an in-track direction.

Deposition system with moveable-position web guides

An electrode film includes a first electrode pattern having a first set of parallel conductive electrodes and a second electrode pattern having a second set of parallel conductive electrodes disposed on a first surface of a transparent film, wherein elements of the first electrode pattern do not cross over elements of the second electrode pattern. A third electrode pattern having a third set of parallel conductive electrodes is disposed on a second surface of the transparent film, wherein the first, second and third sets of parallel conductive electrodes are arranged in an interlaced pattern. The electrode patterns are configured to be connected to respective power sources of electrical power supplying respective waveforms to generate a time-varying electric field pattern above a surface of the electrode film.

Double-sided electrodynamic screen films

An inking system for use in transferring ink to a gravure printing surface in a gravure printing system includes a gravure cylinder r having a printing zone located between first and second recessed bearing contact zones. A radius of the recessed bearing contact zones is less than a radius of the printing zone by at least 0.100 inches. An ink tray includes a floor and first and second end walls. Bearings are mounted outside of the end walls which engage with the first and second bearing contact zones, respectively, thereby positioning the ink tray assembly in a specified position relative to the gravure cylinder. Upper edges of the end walls extend into the recessed bearing contact zones.

Low-volume gravure inking system

A modular thin film deposition system, includes a machine base, a deposition head for depositing a thin film of material onto a process surface of a substrate, a motion actuator including a fixed portion and a moveable portion, and one or more interchangeable substrate positioner modules adapted to mount on the moveable portion of the motion actuator. The interchangeable substrate positioner modules include kinematic mounting features that engage with corresponding kinematic mounting features on the moveable portion of the motion actuator. The motion actuator moves the interchangeable substrate positioner in a motion direction, thereby moving the substrate in an in-track direction in a plane parallel to the output face of the deposition head during deposition of the thin film of material onto the process surface of the substrate.

Modular thin film deposition system

An electrode film is fabricated by using a flexographic printing system to print a first electrode pattern including a first set of parallel electrodes and a second electrode pattern including a second set of parallel electrodes onto a first surface of a transparent film using a catalytic ink, wherein elements of the first electrode pattern do not cross over elements of the second electrode pattern. The flexographic printing system prints a third electrode pattern including a third set of parallel electrodes onto a second surface of the transparent film using the catalytic ink, wherein the first, second and third sets of parallel electrodes are arranged in an interlaced pattern. A conductive metallic material is electrolessly plated onto the catalytic ink such that the elements of the first, second and third electrode patterns become conductive.

Fabricating double-sided electrodynamic screen films

An electrical element is fabricated including an optically-detectable pattern of embedded information. An initial physical design is received for an electrical element that performs an electrical function, together with a pattern of information to be embedded in the electrical element. An encoding region is designated within the initial physical design of the electrical element. Information-encoding patterns are determined for one or more thin-film layers in the encoding region to form an optical layer structure that encodes the pattern of information. The initial physical design and the information-encoding patterns are combined into a modified physical design which is used to fabricate the electrical element. The fabricated electrical element performs the electrical function and forms an optically-detectable interference image including the embedded pattern of information when illuminated by incident light.

Embedding an optically-detectable pattern of information in an electrical element

A thin film deposition system includes a vacuum-preloaded gas bearing deposition head positioned in an external environment. The deposition head has a vertically-oriented output face including a plurality of source openings through which gaseous materials are supplied and one or more exhaust openings. An exhaust pressure at the exhaust openings is less than an ambient pressure, and a source pressure at the source openings is greater than the exhaust pressure, with the pressure at the outermost source openings being greater than the ambient pressure. A substrate positioner applies a vertical force onto a substrate unit, the vertical force passing through a center of gravity of the substrate unit. A motion control system moves the substrate positioner, thereby moving the substrate unit relative to the output face in an in-track direction without constraining the motion of the substrate unit in a direction normal to the output face of the deposition head.

Vertical system with vacuum pre-loaded deposition head

An electrical element includes an optically-detectable pattern of embedded information. A plurality of thin-film layers is applied on the surface of the substrate wherein one or more of the thin-film layers is at least partially transparent. The plurality of thin-film layers overlaps in an encoding region to form an optical layer structure, wherein at least one of the thin-film layers in the optical layer structure contributes to an electrical function of the electrical element. At least one of the thin-film layers in the optical layer structure includes an information-encoding pattern which contributes to an optically-detectable interference image when illuminated by incident light, and wherein the optically-detectable interference image corresponds to at least a portion of the pattern of embedded information.

Electronic element with embedded information

A material deposition system for depositing a material on a surface of a substrate includes a deposition head having an output face configured to simultaneously supply a plurality of gaseous materials in a sequence of gas zones. The gas zones include a deposition zone located between first and second inert zones. The deposition zone includes a first reactant zone adjacent to the first inert zone, a last reactant zone adjacent to the second inert zone, and one or more purge gas zones. A motion actuator moves a substrate over the output face with a repeating motion profile that prevents a region of active deposition on the substrate from being exposed to the external environment prior to having achieved a final material deposition amount. The repeating motion profile include a forward motion portion and a backward motion portion which is less than the forward distance by an ooch distance.

Deposition system with repeating motion profile

A pattern of information is detected in a thin-film electrical element including a plurality of thin-film layers on a substrate, the plurality of thin-film layers overlapping in an encoding region to form an optical layer structure. At least one of the thin-film layers in the optical layer structure includes an embedded information-encoding pattern. The thin-film electrical element is illuminated with an incident light beam from a light source thereby producing an optically-detectable interference image including the embedded pattern of information. An image capture system is used to capture an image of the optically-detectable interference image, and a data processing system is used to analyze the captured image to detect the embedded pattern of information. One or more actions are initiated in response to the detected pattern of information.

Decoding information embedded in an electronic element

A method device is prepared with a patterned thin film that can include one or more metal oxides on a suitable substrate. Initially, a pattern of a deposition inhibitor is provided on a surface of the substrate, which deposition inhibitor comprises at least one cellulose ester. This pattern has both inhibitor areas where the deposition inhibitor is present and open areas where the deposition inhibitor is absent. An inorganic thin film is then deposited on the surface of the substrate by a chemical vapor deposition process only in the open areas of the pattern. Further operations can be carried out including deposit of a second inorganic thin film exactly over the initial inorganic thin film, the deposition inhibitor can be removed from the inhibitor areas of the pattern, or both operations can be carried out in sequence.

Method for selective thin film deposition

Growing community of inventors

Rochester, NY, United States of America

Carolyn Rae Ellinger