Self-wound label acts as release liner

Published: March 01, 1995

Self-wound interleaved ribbons and labels for thermal-transfer printing are available from Media Solutions Inc., Longmeadow, MA, and IIMAK, Amherst, NY.

The product, named Swirl, acts as a release liner for the label material until just before printing. The ribbon wind is then reversed, and it becomes the standard thermal transfer ribbon.

"We're excited about this new product, and we believe it will solve many of the questions about thermal-transfer printing on a linerfree material." Meyer M. Weiss, president of Media Solutions, said. "We have created a product that at one point has a liner, then at another becomes linerfree. This is a true resource reduction. A major benefit is we can use most specified original-equipment manufacturer paper, film and ribbon combinations. We also believe we couldn't have completed this project in the time-frame required without the strong technical capabilities and commitment of our strategic partner Iimak."

Swirl is said to offer benefits including cost savings over standard thermal-transfer face stock/ribbons combinations, and the face stock and ribbon will be precisely matched so the end user will get top performance out of their printer, and the user will get approximately 60% more labels per roll.