Pad Printing Inks

The process of pad printing plays a vital role for industrial applications. It is known as tampon printing in Europe. In printing areas from 1970’s pad printing beat the market shares over stamping and screen printing. Since the features of pad printing differs compared to other methods. 

Using a bag of soft gelatin material off-set type of hand transfer printing was done to transfer the image. This seems to be the origin of pad printing 200 years back. Using mechanical pad printer watch faces has imprinted which was the first industrial application. Instead of gelatin came the RTV silicone with the development of silicon transfer pads. This has become an demanding method of imprinting on industrial products.

Features

  • printing rough surfaces  and shapes
  • printing difficult substrates at a sensible speed
  • printing of fine exhaustive images
  • offering the printer an enormous versatility
  • high quality printing on irregular surfaces (such as in multi-cavity molds) 

Application 

  • Electronic micro components, such as cables, connectors, IC chips, relays, etc.
  • Industrial Buttons and Keys as found on calculators, telephones and computer keyboards
  • Electrical Household Appliances such as iron, VCR, TV, coffee pots, telephones, etc.
  • Large Industrial Appliance panels such as on dishwashers, washing machines and dryers
  • Toys such as figurines, dolls, cars, infant bottles, pacifiers, rattles and night lights.
  • Advertising Specialty Items like pens, lighters, key chains, clocks, watch faces
  • Sporting Goods such as golf balls, baseballs, tennis rackets, footballs
     
         The benefit of PAD PRINTING INKS is unique when compared to other printing inks. Since they are not limited to flat or round surfaces such as screen printing. Pad printing inks used to decorate variety of printing substrates and suggest the manufacturer with the same. Some of the materials which use pad printing inks are: plastic, glass, metal, coated substrates, ceramics, silicones, pharmaceuticals, foods and more.                    

In general PAD PRINTING INKS solvent based. Before using it should be mixed with additives. After touching the pad printing ink it will dry within seconds. But it may take longer period of time for complete drying.
PAD PRINTING INKS  are prepared with the help of resins, pigments, and thinners. The resin system also known as the binder which forms the dried ink film. Several resin systems are used for pad printing inks. Pigments are used to isolate colorants in the resin system. Thinners adjust the pigment mixture to get the individuality of the printing ink.
Typically PAD PRINTING INKS  show a discrepancy by the number of its components. The diverse applications of Single and two component pad printing inks are:

  1. Single component pad printer ink will stick on to solvent receptive substrates and does not want any hardener. Without trouble for cleaning it can run for many hours.
  2. Two component pad printer ink need intense durability. In addition hardener is used on difficult substrates. The span time to run this pad printing ink is about 8 hours 
       The ideal purposes of pad printing inks is labeling and marking. It is also appropriate for printing on wood, coated surfaces, plastics, metals, leather, rubber, promotional items, household appliances, electronics industry and much more. It is known for good printability, high flexibility, and water resistivity.