Avery Dennison Corporation

Chapman, Steven R.

Wu, Feng

Ethelbert Galicia

Steven R Chapman

Feng Wu

John D Peck

Nikhil R Agashe

Methods of making tiled articles and molds used to make retroreflective articles. The methods include forming a prism array on a master substrate and forming a replica of the master. A reference edge is formed on the replica, thereby reducing the size of the prism array, yet maintaining a lateral dimension of the replica to maintain ease of handling of the replica. The replica is copied and the reference edge on the copied tiles are exposed, such that the reference edge can be mated and secured face-to-face with a reference edge on other tiles in order to form a tiled article. The tiled article is used as a mold to produce retroreflective articles or can be further duplicated and mated to form larger tiled articles to be used as molds. Tiled articles used as molds and retroreflective articles produced from the molds are also disclosed.

Tiled retroreflector with multi-stage dicing

Various geometries are described for forming retroreflective structures in polymeric sheets or films. The geometries enable venting of volatile gases that can otherwise become trapped between the embossing surface and the polymeric sheet or film. The geometries are incorporated in tooling belts or other pattern forming surfaces.

Vented tooling belt for production of structured surfaces

A rotationally insensitive, retroreflective prismatic sheeting and method of manufacture is provided. The sheeting includes discrete clusters of cube corners that are separated from one another on all sides by a textured surface. Each of the cube corners in each cluster has a base edge that is not collinear or parallel with the base edges of cube corners on either side of it. The array of cube corners clusters is rulable, and the cube corners have different orientations. Four or more of the cube corners in each cluster may have edges that converge into a central point within the cluster, and the cube corners of the clusters may include at least two symmetrical pairs of cube corners. The shapes of the cube corner clusters may be polygonal, and all of the cube corners may share a common vertex located at the center of the polygonal shape.

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Lincolnwood, IL, United States of America

Ethelbert Galicia