JP2002042103A - Side printing card - Google Patents

Abstract

(57) [Summary] There is a need for a relatively inexpensive information display means that is visually invisible, difficult to duplicate, and machine-readable, and also serves as a counterfeit prevention method. In a card having information printed on a side surface,
A side printing card is provided, wherein the printing means is a laser.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a side-printed card which is laser-printed on the side of a security-requiring card such as a cash card, credit card, or various certification cards.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art All cards currently in circulation are used to prove the ID of the person who uses the card. The first credit card is simply a design printed on the plastic surface, the card is engraved with uneven numbers or katakana on the surface to prove the identity, and the only thing that proves the identity is the sign field Met. The card cover letter states that when a card is sent from a card company, the person himself / herself must first enter his / her own name in a signature field with a ballpoint pen or the like. At present, a magnetic recording unit and an IC module are formed on a card so that a cash dispenser or the like can receive a caching service unattended. It has such a structure. Each of the above-mentioned means is for proof of the identity and for preventing abuse. In addition, a card which has a long usage period and is related to payment of money is provided with means for preventing forgery. As one of them, holograms have recently been affixed to the front design of cards. Holograms are positioned as the most advanced technology that can be recognized by the eye and are considered the most difficult to duplicate. Conventionally, technologies used as forgery prevention means are those for which equipment for manufacturing is not generally available on the market, and therefore, the manufacturing method is unknown or incomprehensible. Most of them are difficult, or the duplicates cannot achieve the same effect as the real ones, even if they are photographically duplicated, and it is too costly for a malicious party to make a fake. Many things get lost.

[0003] However, the hologram is characterized in that it cannot be duplicated with a photograph, the manufacturing equipment is special, and the manufacturing method is unknown. However, there is a problem that it is difficult to incorporate machine-readable information into the hologram. Further, there is a problem that the cost is high. As a technique for solving the above-mentioned problem, a technique for printing fine information on a side surface of a card, thermal transfer, or printing by ink jet (Japanese Patent Laid-Open No.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. -58871) is introduced, but the quality is not enough to be visually recognized, and much less the printed quality is not practically machine-readable.

[0004]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Accordingly, the present invention utilizes a relatively inexpensive information display means which is visually invisible, difficult to duplicate, and machine-readable, and which also serves as an anti-counterfeiting method. A side printing card is provided.

[0005]

The present invention provides an IC card,
A magnetic card, an optical card, or a card on which information is printed on the side of the composite card, wherein the printing means is a laser, and a part or all of the information is machine-readable information; Is associated with information recorded on a portion other than the side of the card.

[0006]

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS A side print card according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a view for explaining an embodiment of a side face printing card of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a view for explaining an embodiment in which machine reading information and visual information are printed on the short side of the card. FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining a method of manufacturing a laminated card, and FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a state in which information is printed on a side surface of the card by a laser printing device.

FIG. 1 shows an embodiment in which one line of text is printed on the side surface of the card 1 by a laser. The card 1 may be a laminated card, an injection molded card, or a card obtained by punching a single layer board. The material may be plastic or metal.

FIG. 2 shows an embodiment in which character information and machine-readable information 2 are printed on the side surface of a laminated card by a laser, and a transparent sheet 101 which is usually a transparent print protection layer is provided above and below the card 1. However, most of them are bonded by an adhesive (not shown). A magnetic recording layer 122 is formed on the transparent sheet, and a printing layer is provided below the transparent sheet 122. The printing ink 121 is limited to the case where the printing ink 121 is formed up to the edge or inside the edge. In some cases. The printing layer is often printed by an offset method or a screen method, but in special cases, may be printed by gravure printing, letterpress printing, octopus printing, flexographic printing, electrostatic printing, or the like.

The lower side of the printing ink is a core sheet 105, and a plurality of layers can be freely selected depending on the purpose. In the case of injection or a single-plate configuration, 101 is a protective coating layer, in which case there is no magnetic recording layer, and an IC module (not shown) is often formed on the card surface. Most of the sides of the card are stamped with a die, except when made by injection molding, so the surface is not a clean flat surface.

A method of manufacturing a laminated card will be described with reference to FIG. The front and back designs are printed on each of the front and back milky sheets 102, which are usually printed in multiple impositions and are front and back printing sheets. Although the printing method is properly used depending on the design, as described above, most of the methods are based on offset printing, and fine lines and photographic objects are printed using a UV (ultraviolet) curable ink, or rarely an oxidation polymerization type ink. The UV ink is dried instantly by irradiating ultraviolet rays, and the oxidation polymerization type ink is dried by exposing the printing surface to air and leaving it to stand for a certain period of time. A heavy design and a deep design are printed by a screen printing method. Since the ink for screen printing is usually dissolved in a solvent, the solvent is volatilized and dried.

When the printing ink has dried, the milky sheet 1 serving as a core is formed between the front and back milky sheets 102 as shown in FIG.
The transparent sheet 101 is stacked on the printing ink surfaces on the front and back sides with the sheet No. 03 interposed therebetween. When a magnetic recording unit is required, a plurality of rows of magnetic stripes are previously transferred to the surface of the transparent sheet 101 on the front side. Lamination is usually performed by heat and pressure, and when using an adhesive, both sides of the printing sheet 102, or
Both sides of the milky white (core) sheet 103 and the printing ink side of the transparent sheet are coated with a heat-reactive type adhesive. The heat for lamination is 110 to 150 degrees Celsius when the material is vinyl chloride, and the pressure is 30 to 60 kg / c.
m ² , heating time under pressure is 20 to 30 minutes, and cooling time is also 20 to 30 minutes. After the laminating step, the multi-faced laminated sheet 110 is subjected to a die-cutting step, and becomes one card. In the case of an IC card, as an additional process, a two-stage recess (not shown) for mounting the IC module 3 is formed by a counterbore, and an adhesive is applied to the shallow recess, and the IC module 3 The bonding margin and the bonding margin of the concave portion are pressure-bonded by heat and pressure.

The card has a signature field, and is called a signature panel. The signature panel is signed with a fountain pen, ballpoint pen, etc., so that it is usually made permeable, and the surface is prescribed to be rough, and the signature once signed to be tampered with is erased or erased. In some cases, a copy-forgery-inhibited pattern is printed on the surface so that the pattern cannot be erased. Some credit cards have the above-mentioned hologram transferred thereon for the purpose of preventing forgery. Holograms include rainbow holograms and Lippmann holograms, both of which require advanced techniques. In recent years, the above-mentioned rainbow holograms can be mass-produced relatively inexpensively, so that they have been adopted to prevent forgery of cards. In addition, as a means of certifying a person other than a signature, a face photograph is often printed on a company employee card, a credit card, or various certificate cards. In recent years, face photographs have also been printed in color, and heat is applied to a sublimation transfer film composed of three or four colors to sublimate-transfer ink to an image receiving layer on a card surface.

Next, laser printing will be described with reference to FIG. The card 1 is sent from the feeder 33 to the laser printer 30 under the control of the computer 35. When driven from the position a to the position b, the optical sensor 31 detects the card edge, and issues a command to the laser 32 to start printing after n seconds. As the card moves and begins to pass in front of the laser 32, the lateral movement of the card and the vertical movement of the laser beam 320 record information on the side of the card. The printed card c is discharged to the stacker 34.

A typical laser excites a laser medium contained in an optical resonator to operate in a population inversion state. Depending on the type of medium, solid laser, gas laser,
There are a semiconductor laser, a dye laser, an excimer laser and the like. The laser light is a coherent light having a completely uniform phase, has a very narrow spectrum width, further has remarkable coherence, and is a thin beam having sharp directivity in many cases. The continuous transmission power ranges from 10 μW to about 100 kW, and the peak power ranges from 1 W to 100 TW. The pulse width is usually 1 μs to 1 ps. Lasers widely used include a CO2 laser as a gas laser, a Nd: YAG laser as a solid laser, and a Nd: YVO4 laser.

In the present invention, a solid-state laser using vanadium / yttrium oxide as a medium, Nd: YVO
4 Print information on the side of the card using a laser.
The general specifications are: laser emission wavelength 532 nm, output 2 W, pulse width 20 nsec, pulse energy 1 m
j, maximum peak power 5 kW, beam diameter 0.3 mm, focal length of printing section 100 mm, maximum spot size 20 μ
m, printing speed 300 characters / sec, power supply 100V.

The height of the side of the card, excluding the transparent part,
0.55 mm to 0.73 mm (core sheet 10 in FIG. 2)
Therefore, if the spot size is 10 μm, two to three lines of kanji mixed character strings of 24 dots vertically and horizontally can be displayed. Since one of the objectives is to prevent forgery, a machine-readable 6-digit bar code is repeatedly printed three times so that even if one bar cannot be read due to scratches or dirt, it is read by the other two.

A conventionally known card base material can be used. For example, vinyl chloride, vinyl chloride-vinyl acetate copolymer, polyester, polypropylene, polyethylene, acrylic, polystyrene, polycarbonate, ABS and other resins, metal, synthetic paper, etc., a single layer, or a mixture of one or more of these Layered sheets can be used. Examples of the multilayer sheet include a three-layer structure in which a white resin sheet containing a white coloring material is used as a core sheet, and a transparent sheet is laminated on both front and back surfaces of the core sheet. The thickness of the card is not particularly limited and may be appropriately selected depending on the application.

When the above material is printed with a laser, the resin becomes clearer as the glass transition point becomes higher. For example,
Comparing polyvinyl chloride and polycarbonate, the glass transition point of polyvinyl chloride is 70 ° C. to 87 ° C. and the glass transition point of polycarbonate is 140 ° C., so that the printing quality is clearly better for polycarbonate. When a laser beam is radiated onto plastic, the irradiated part is initially darkened black, and as the power is increased, the density is darkened to the maximum for each type of plastic. If you increase the power further, the plastic will melt. Therefore, when the material to be printed is determined, a test for setting conditions is performed. Vinyl chloride is also inferior to polycarbonate in terms of quality, but it is sufficient in terms of color density because, for example, a bar code or the like is printed and a bar code reader performs a reading test to sufficiently read the data. If the concentration is insufficient, a white inorganic material is mixed at the time of mixing and extruding the raw materials of the vinyl chloride core sheet, and a coloring material may be mixed with the inorganic material at that time.

Next, an embodiment of a magnetic card reader for reading data by driving a card will be described with reference to the association between side data and non-side data. A six-digit random number, a start code, and an end code, which differ depending on the card, are printed as bar codes on the side surface of the magnetic card. The magnetic encoder reads the side data with a bar code reader, and scrambles the six-digit number with a membership code or the like on the magnetic stripe and records it as magnetic recording data. In another embodiment, the card reader is connected to the computer at the head office online, and the secret number unique to the member can be further scrambled for magnetic recording. That is, if the side data cannot be read, magnetic recording cannot be performed with the correct code.Furthermore, since it is not possible to connect to the computer at the head office unless it is an online terminal, the card and reader / writer are limited, and the card is tampered with Becomes extremely difficult.

Since an IC card is generally read and written without being driven, if it is desired to use side data, a bar code reader for reading data on a surface may be provided on the reader / writer side, and especially a memory without a CPU. Type I
Valid for C cards. Since an IC card equipped with a CPU imparts high security to the IC chip itself, it is considered that side data is rarely used as security.

[0022]

EFFECT OF THE INVENTION A card with a magnetic stripe, which is said to have low security by printing information that is visible, difficult to duplicate, and machine-readable by using a laser on the side of the card, and a memory, The security of the card can be increased.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a view for explaining one embodiment of a side print card of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a diagram for explaining an embodiment in which machine-readable information and visual information are printed on a short side surface of a card.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining a method of manufacturing a laminated card;

FIG. 4 is a diagram for explaining a state in which information is printed on the side of a card by a laser printing apparatus.

[Explanation of symbols]

 DESCRIPTION OF SYMBOLS 1, 100 Card 101 Transparent sheet 102 Milky sheet 103 Milky white (core) sheet 105 Core sheet 110 Multi-layered laminated sheet 121 Printing ink 122 Magnetic recording unit 2 Side printing information 30 Laser printing device 31 Detecting device 32 Laser emitting device 320 Laser beam 33 Feeder 34 Delivery (stacker) 35 Controller (personal computer)

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Claims (7)

[Claims] 1. A card having information printed on its side,
A side print card, wherein the printing means is a laser. 2. The side printing card according to claim 1, wherein a part or all of the information is machine-readable information. 3. The side printing card according to claim 1, wherein the information is associated with information recorded on a side other than the side of the card. 4. The side printing card according to claim 1, wherein the card is an IC card. 5. The side printing card according to claim 1, wherein the card is a magnetic card. 6. A side printing card according to claim 1, wherein said card is an optical card. 7. A side printing card according to claim 4, wherein said card is a composite card having at least two of the functions of claims 4 to 6.