Magnetic printing of data from soft magnetic patterns

A technique of magnetic printing utilizing a master with soft magnetic pattern has been developed to answer the need for printing data on magnetic media in large quantities. In such a master, sections of highly permeable magnetic materials are deposited according to the data pattern to be printed onto the slave media. The soft magnetic master is then placed in close contact to the slave media and a magnetic field is applied to induce a field sufficient to record on the slave media, from the discontinuities in the master. The soft magnetic master and printing station are designed with the help of a computer simulation of the process. Optimization of the printing method was carried out empirically. It is shown that this method enables signals from printed media to be comparable to those from directly recorded data. The method has an advantage, in that the soft magnetic master can be used repetitively on media with a wide range of coercivity without damaging the magnetic properties of the master.