Abstract: An apparatus for blocking an ophthalmic lens blank for working the lens includes an alignment station for supporting and aligning the lens blank relative to a target image and a transport means for moving the lens from the alignment station to a blocking station while maintaining lens orientation. The blocking station includes a support for a lens block, support for the lens, and a mechanism for injecting heated liquid bonding material between lens and block which solidifies on cooling to join the lens and block.

Abstract: A web loading and feeding system comprises an elongated web and a web loading and feeding machine. The web is fed longitudinally of itself through the machine by a pair of drive sprockets having pins which cooperate with holes in side edge portion of the web. The hole arrangement in the web and the pin arrangement on the sprockets readily enable a machine operator to visually determine how to properly load the web onto the sprockets.

Abstract: A web loading and feeding system comprises an elongated web and a web loading and feeding machine. The web is fed longitudinally of itself through the machine by a pair of drive sprockets having pins which cooperate with holes in side edge portion of the web. The hole arrangement in the web and the pin arrangement on the sprockets readily enable a machine operator to visually determine how to properly load the web onto the sprockets.

Abstract: An ink jet printing system suited to the making of large scale graphics, such as outdoor billboards, includes an endless carrier for moving a plurality of rigid flat panels, onto which a graphic is to be printed in sections, repetitively past an ink jet printing station. At the printing station each panel moves in purely rectilinear fashion in a direction parallel to its ink drop receiving face so that such face remains essentially at a uniform spacing from the ink jet printing heads of the printing station as the printing occurs. A means for timing the operation of the ink jet heads takes into account irregularities or changes in the motion of the panels past the printing station so that the ink drops are correctly placed despite such irregularities or changes. The ink jet heads can eject relatively large drops of pigmented ink.