Licensed Products

Contra Vision® ORS™ and Contra Vision® BACKLITE ORS™  Licensed Products and the Overlap Registration System™ of making See-through Graphics

See-through graphic panels in general comprise a transparent material and a "print pattern" of lines, dots or perforated material onto which is superimposed a design. While perforated materials are currently more prevalent, non-perforated panels have a number of advantages over perforated materials which will lead to their wider adoption. These include:

• typically more durable and easier to keep clean
  
• wider choice of substrate, including any printable transparent film, plastic sheet or glass
• typically cheaper for large volumes and cheaper in smaller volumes if a perforated material is overlaminated
• better visibility when wet (water in the holes of a perforated material prevents through vision)
  
  

Contra Vision Ltd's original "dominant" patent for see-through graphics, applied for internationally in 1985, identified eight basic methods of production and further methods have been incorporated into subsequent patent applications. However, commercially desirable methods of production can be grouped into the following four principal technologies:

This online licensing system is for:

• "Print only" onto transparent imperforate substrates, according to our Overlap Registration System™ to make Contra Vision® ORS™ and Contra Vision® BACKLITE ORS™ products.

Contra Vision® ORS™ products have an opaque "print pattern", typically coloured a uniform black on one side to assist through vision.

Contra Vision® BACKLITE ORS™ products have a translucent white "print pattern" comprising a translucent white ink and translucent design inks, typically CMYK. These panels can be illuminated from behind and are typically adopted where visibility during the hours of darkness is of paramount importance.

The three other principal technologies are:

• Contra Vision® Performance™ and other licensed Perforated Materials
• Contra Vision® Stripes™ cut self-adhesive vinyl in a pattern of lines
• Contra Vision® XR™ "Print and Remove" exact registration printing onto transparent imperforate substrates, comprising the removal of excess ink to leave the required layers in truly exact registration, as illustrated in Fig. 1. 

More information on these three other technologies is available at http://www.contravision.com/products.html.

The Overlap Registration System™ uses a "print pattern" of lines to assist the management of the inevitable lack of registration in any printing process (all printing machines have an error or tolerance in delivering ink to the substrate, multi-stage processes have an error in delivering the substrate to the machine, as well as many other potential causes of lack of registration, for example dot gain, dimensional changes in the substrate owing to changes in temperature, moisture content, etc.). If one tried to print the pattern of lines with a cross-section similar to Fig. 1, without any ink removal process, the inevitable lack of registration would lead to something like the cross-section of a single line in Fig. 2.

White ink and coloured ink would be visible from the side required to be just black. From the design side, the perceived colours would be affected by reduced visible area, being substantially obliterated when applied over black ink. Also, the colours would not be properly visible where applied to the transparent substrate alone (without a white background) and the perceived colours would be "lightened" by the exposed white ink (lighter "value" or "graytone").

Our Overlap Registration System™ provides two patented methods of overcoming these problems and ensures a consistent colour rendering throughout the area of a panel and throughout a production run.