Patent ID: 8011841

Claim:
A re-transfer printing machine comprising: an ink film having a sublimation-ink area of at least one sublimation ink and an invisible-ink area of an invisible ink; an intermediate-transfer film having a protecting layer and an ink receptor layer laminated on the protecting layer to enable the sublimation ink and the invisible ink to be received therein; the ink receptor layer having a plurality of transfer areas corresponding to the area of an object to be printed; a transfer mechanism for transferring the sublimation ink and the invisible ink to the plurality of transfer areas segmentalized in the ink receptor layer thereby to form a sublimation-ink image of the sublimation ink and an invisible-ink image of the invisible ink in the ink receptor layer, based on a print image for the object to be printed; a re-transfer mechanism for re-transferring the sublimation-ink image and the invisible-ink image to the object thereby to form the print image thereon; a controller for controlling respective operations of the transfer mechanism and the re-transfer mechanism; and an overlap detecting unit connected to the controller to detect whether the print image for the object contains an overlapping between the sublimation-ink image and the invisible-ink image or not, wherein when the overlap detecting unit detects that the print image contains the overlapping, the controller allows the transfer mechanism to transfer the sublimation-ink image and the invisible-ink image to different transfer areas in the receptor layer, and when the overlap detecting unit detects that the print image does not contain the overlapping, the controller allows the transfer mechanism to transfer both the sublimation-ink image and the invisible-ink image to a same transfer area in the receptor layer.