Ohio Electronic Engravers, Inc.

Mdc Max Daetwyler Ag

Ohio Gravure Technologies, Inc.

Daetwyler R & D Corp.

Ohio Electric Engravers, Inc.

John W Fraser

Curtis Woods

Paul L Holowko

Kenneth F Bornhorst, Jr

Robert D Likins

Eric J Serenius

Thomas J Eichhorn

Eric Serenius

Tony D Beckett

Kenneth William Jackson

Jeffrey William Hemmelgarn

Louis Jacques Duchesneau

Neal Clements

Christopher Darrell Winter

Mark Burns

A system and method for reducing and/or eliminating the printed layer-over-layer registration error.

System and method for layer-to-layer compensation and error correction

An engraver having a shoe sensor system for sensing a movement of the shoe and for adjusting an engraving signal in response thereto.

System and method for improved engraving of gravure cylinders by adjusting engraving signal responsive to movement of shoe position

An engraver having an engraving signal generating system for engraving a workpiece. The engraver includes a setup circuit enabling direct dimensional control of the cavities engraved by the engraver. Controls are provided for setting at least one of a plurality of parameters, such as a black cell width. These parameters are fed to the setup circuit which translates them into multiplication factors for an AC signal and a videosignal. The multiplied signals are combined with an offset signal to produce an engraving signal.

Apparatus and method for engraving a gravure printing cylinder

A platform for supporting an engraving head in a manner accommodating translational movement without any associated rotation. The platform has a deck which is supported by a pair of flexible support columns. In operation the platform is situated alongside a rotating printing cylinder. The engraving head is mounted on the deck of the platform and is provided with a guide shoe which rides against the surface of the printing cylinder. As the cylinder rotates to angular positions having different radii, the engraving head responds with a purely linear reaction. Consequently the engraving head is able to engrave uniform-depth cavities in the surface of the printing cylinder. In two alternative embodiments the deck is driven by a resilient link arrangement which is coupled to a leadscrew and carriage assembly.

Engraving head support method with linear head driver

The invention is characterized in that it comprises a toolpath generating routine and system for generating a plurality of control points directly from image data representing an image to be engraved. The control points are used to generate a toolpath which, in turn, will be used to energize an engraving head such that a tool or stylus will engrave a pattern of engraved areas in response to the toolpath. An engraving system and method for engraving at least one engraved area is shown having an engraving head tuner for tuning an engraving head such that the frequency characteristic of the engraving head defines a substantially constant gain for frequencies less than a predetermined frequency. The invention is further characterized in that it incudes a system and method for interactively or automatically tuning the engraving head, interactively adjusting the filter characteristics (including the filter coefficients for the filters used on the engraving head) and for being responsive to the type of image data (whether continuous tone data or linework data). The invention is characterized in that it synthesizes the screening function so as to more accurately reproduce the image to be engraved by engraving multiple frequency cells where single cells would be engraved in the past.

Engraving system and method with arbitrary toolpath control

An engraver having an engraving signal generating system for engraving a workpiece. The engraver includes a setup circuit enabling direct dimensional control of the cavities engraved by the engraver. Controls are provided for setting at least one of a plurality of parameters, such as a black cell width, a black channel width and a highlight cell width. These parameters are fed to the setup circuit which translates them into multiplication factors for an AC signal and a video signal. The multiplied signals are combined with an offset signal to produce an engraving signal.

Engraving system and engraving signal generator for engraving workpieces

Engraving head support system with linear head driver

The invention provides a method for controlling the engraving head and the response of the engraving head in response to a plurality of engraving setup parameters which may be input into a computer associated with the engraving head and automatically generating a response signal for energizing the engraving head in response to the plurality of engraving setup parameters which were input in real units. The method further provides that adjusting one or more of the engraving setup parameters in real units may be performed. Further, the method provides for multiplying either an AC input signal or a video signal by a multiplication factor which is generated by the setup circuit to produce the driving signal.

Method for automatically controlling an engraver in response to a

Engraving head platform

Apparatus for engraving a gravure printing cylinder includes a setup circuit enabling direct dimensional control of the cavities engraved by a stylus. Controls are provided for setting a black cell width, a black channel width and a highlight cell width. These parameters are fed to the setup circuit which translates them into multiplication factors for an AC signal and a video signal. The multiplied signals are combined with an offset signal to produce a driving signal for the stylus.

A leadscrew driving arrangement which is corrected to eliminate the effect of pitch errors. The leadscrew is mapped to create a table of differences between the leadscrew angular position and the corresponding angular position of a perfect leadscrew which has been advanced the same axial distance. The differences are used to create a correction table which is stored in a PROM. During operation of the leadscrew, the correction table is used to adjust the leadscrew driving signal.

Apparatus and method for driving a leadscrew

An engraving apparatus for engraving the outer surface of a cylinder used in a gravure printing process includes an engraving stylus mounted onto a shaft for engraving the surface of the cylinder. A drive mechanism is employed for producing angular movement of the shaft and the stylus aboout the central axis of the shaft. A position sensor comprising a light beam illuminator and a light beam detector is associated with the shaft to sense the angular movement of the shaft and produce a shaft position signal representative thereof. A reference signal generator is employed for producing a reference drive signal and a video signal generator is used to produce a video drive signal representative of the information to be engraved into the surface of the cylinder. A feedback control is employed which is responsive to high frequency portions of the video signal, the reference drive signal and the shaft position signal, and generates a corrected drive signal including a correction for any variations in the amplitude of the angular oscillatory movement of the shaft. The corrected drive signal and the video signal are then combined and supplied to an engraver driver which produces an engraver drive signal for actuating the drive mechanism. The engraving apparatus may further include an electronic damping mechanism connected to the position sensor and responsive to the shaft position signal for generating a negative feedback signal to the engraver driver to provide damping for the shaft and the engraving tool.

Growing community of inventors

Dayton, OH, United States of America

John W Fraser