THE METHOD OF GLOBES PRODUCTION AND THE DEVICE FOR ITS REALIZATION
State Scientific and Production
The most widely used nowadays method of globes production is the method of moulding, according to which the image of the world map is printed onto plastic, then the plastic is heated and moulded by spherical punch. This method has a series of flaws, the main being the deformation of the cartographic image. Difficulties in the preparation of the clean copy, which arise due to the necessity to take into account the further deformations, lie in the fact that we have to deform the elements of the cartographic image at the stage of clean copy preparation. The proposed method makes it possible to avoid the above-listed flaws; moreover, it has advantages, which lie in the possibility of full-colour print for all kinds of images on the surface of the globe. This method is particularly useful for the production of small lots of globes.
The method consists of the image direct printing onto the surface of the spherical billet. The surface of the billet is prepared for jet printing in advance. After printing the billet can be protected by a layer of lacquer.
A device is proposed for the implementation of the method, which provides the printing of the image onto the surface of the spherical billet. This device consists of a jet printing head, which moves along the arc-shaped guide conducted by the head-moving mechanism. Printing of the image is carried out along the meridian of the spherical billet. After printing of an image band, the spherical billet turns by one step and printing of the next band is carried out.
The cartographic image is created by a computer in the digital form. The computer carries out jet printing head and billet tuning, and also the jet printing head movement tuning.
For the production of different diameter globes several devices with different radius of arc guide are used. It is also possible to equip the device with the arc guide of the needed radius using of one printing head.