Fujicopian Co., Ltd.

Fumiaki Shinozaki

Yoshiyuki Obata

Toshiyuki Yamane

Takuto Fukui

Zheng L Cai

Toshihiko Negoro

A heat meltable ink image-receiving sheet used in a melting type thermal transfer method, comprising a sheet substrate and a porous ink-receiving layer, comprising a resin formed on at least one side of the sheet substrate, the porous ink-receiving layer having a thickness of 3 to 50 &mgr;m and a water vapor permeability (JIS L 1099) of not less than 300 g/(m &middot;hour) and less than 1,000 g/(m &middot;hour).

Heat meltable ink image-receiving sheet and image forming method using the same

A melting type thermal transfer recording system capable of providing multi-gradation images of high resolution and high image quality comparable to those of ink jet recording system or sublimation type thermal transfer recording system is disclosed which comprising: a donor film comprising a thin film and a thermal melting type ink layer provided on the thin film, the thermal melting type ink layer having a thickness in a range of 0.5 to 2.5 .mu.m, a surface porous type recording medium comprising a base material and a porous ink receiving layer having numerous minute pores provided on the base material, the ratio of the first total area of aperture portions that are occupied by all the pores to the whole surface area of the porous ink receiving layer being in a range of 10 to 60%, and the ratio of the second total area of aperture portions that are occupied by pores having a pore diameter of 0.5 to 20 .mu.m to the first total area of the aperture portions being 70 to 100%, a thermal head comprising a plurality of heating resistor units arranged in a line at intervals of 8 dots/mm or less, each of the heating resistor units comprising a pair of heating resistor elements of identical shape, a gradation control means for controlling an amount of an ink of the ink layer melted with the heating resistor units by controlling an amount of electricity supplied to the thermal head.

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Osaka-fu, Japan

Fumiaki Shinozaki