Importance

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Abstract

Book style cassette holders or albums are mass produced from sheets of thermoplastics material by unwinding a relatively rigid or stiff thermoplastic sheet from a roll and successively thermal forming the sheet into a plurality of pairs of adjoining trays in side-by-side relation connected by flexible spines and surrounded by marginal portions. The thermal formed areas, preferably composed of two rows of album trays with two sets in each row, are successively severed from the sheet into blanks. Each tray portion of a blank has a bottom surrounded by a hollow peripheral wall with the hollow face of the wall surrounded by a rim providing a pocket. The blanks are fed successively, hollow face upwardly, through a plurality of stations which successively apply adhesive in the pockets, deposit cardboard stiffeners in the pockets, feed a flexible cover sheet and, if desired, a film sheet over all or part of the cover sheet. Printed sheets can also be deposited on the cover sheet and thus covered by the film sheet. The deposited sheets are thermal bonded to the margins surrounding the pairs of trays, the holders or albums are cut free from the blanks, cover sheet and film, the waste marginal portions of the blanks and sheets are wound into a roll and the individual albums are conveyed in open condition to a station where they are manually inspected, closed and packaged for shipment. The entire process is carried out in a straightline operation requiring little manual attention.

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First Claim