A low density polyethylene film layer is extrusion coated on densified bleached
kraft paper liner to form a film-coated liner sheet. A facestock sheet is adhered
with a layer of hot melt adhesive to the film layer to form a laminate sheet web,
which is rolled on a roll. The facestock sheet, the film layer and the adhesive
layer together define a laminate feedstock. The roll is transported to and loaded
on a press with the liner side up. One (or both) edge(s) of the web is (are) crushed
with a calendering die to form thin lead-in edge(s). The web is die cut on the
bottom face, up through the laminate facestock, but not through the paper liner,
to form the perimeters of a grid of blank business cards or other printable media,
with a waste paper frame of the laminate facestock encircling the grid. The web
is then die cut from the top through the paper liner and to but not through the
laminate facestock, to form liner strips covering the back face of the laminate
facestock. According to one preferred embodiment of the invention, alternate ones
of the strips are then pulled off of the laminate facestock web. A final production
step is to sheet the web to form the desired sheet width (or length) of the laminated
sheet construction. The individual laminated business card sheets can be stacked
into the infeed tray of an ink jet printer for example, and the sheets individually
and automatically fed lead-in edge first into the printer and a printing operation
performed on each of the printable media, to form a sheet of printed media. The
remaining strips on the back of the laminate facestock cover the lateral cut lines
in the laminate facestock and thereby hold the facestock together as it is fed
into and passed through the printer. The user then individually peels the printed
media off of the strips and out from the waste paper frame. Thereby printed business
cards (or other printed media), each with its entire perimeter defined by clean
die cuts, are formed. Instead of calendering both edges of the web and thus the
sheet, one end can be calendered and a strip of the laminate facestock can be stripped
off of the liner sheet from the other end. The remaining thin liner sheet strip
at the other end forms a thin infeed edge for feeding into a horizontal feed, ink
jet printer.
