Method of transferring decorations to an extruded web

Claim 1

A continuous method of making a plastic material web having thereon a decoration including a layer of metal particles, which method consists essentially in the following sequence of steps: preparing a decoration film (7) by coating a carrier film 11 of a non-polar polyethylene plastics with a discontinuous layer of a printing ink (12), applying thereover a thin coating of a vapor-porous layer (10) of metal particles consisting essentially of aluminum, by vacuum-metallizing on one side thereof, said vapor-porous layer having a thickness of 100-4000 A; heating a body of a plastics material to an elevated temperature at which the plastics is soft and plastic; extruding the so-heated and softened plastics in the form of a hot, extruded web (2) of a plastics material having greater adhesion to said metal particles layer than that of said carrier film; bringing one surface of said freshly extruded, hot plastics web (2) into contact with the coated side of said decoration film (7) and the other surface of said plastics web (2) into contact with a carrier layer web (3); passing the resulting composite of decoration film (7), plastics web (2) and carrier layer web (3) between cooling and compression rollers thereby causing a metal layer (10) to penetrate and adhere to plastics web (2) and plastics web (2) to laminate with carrier layer web (3) as a final decorated material web; detaching said carrier film 11 from the metal layer surface of the final decorated material web; and recovering the so-freed carrier film and reusing it in preparing a fresh supply of decoration film.