Pad printing
Pad printing and promotional details: perfect match
What is pad printing?
It is a young printing technique of indirect marking. Using a pad and a base plate, the pad transfers the ink to the object. It is ideal for molding the design to the shape of the object and printing on parts with irregular surfaces or deformations (curved or rough shapes) with plenty of definition. That's why in Camaloon we use it mainly to customize those promotional or advertising articles that have a slightly trickier surface. Pad printing is very present in instruments and objects that we use every day, such as key rings, notebooks, or computer keyboards.
| Characteristics of pad printing | |
|---|---|
| Advantages | For printing details and smaller letters |
| Colors | 1 color |
| Use | Logos, promotional messages |
What items can you customize with pad printing?
In which do we recommend pad printing?
Those where you need to print fine lines, letters or small characters with precision and care, for example. It is the advertising sector that has benefited the most and has been able to take advantage of pad printing as a printing technique, in articles of very varied sizes and shapes (such as, for example, custom keychains.
How does pad printing work?
Pad printing is somewhat more complex than other techniques such as DTG printing because it requires preparing two elements before printing, apart from the ink:
- The plate or cliché, which is the engraved hole that has been prepared on a steel plate by a chemical process
- The pad: made of rubber or silicone. It is the one that transmits the ink and prints the design in the same way as the one engraved on the plate.
The pad printing process consists of three phases:
The ink is put on the plate / cliché and swept (to apply it evenly) into the racla, which is a very fine steel strip, like a kind of blade that passes over and sweeps away the excess ink. Thus, the ink only remains inside the relief or the engraving hole.
The pad descends on the cliché, and, exerting pressure collects the ink that was deposited in the cracks of the plate.
The pad presses on the item we want to print and transfers the ink that it had collected from the cliché.
Advantages of pad printing
- The cost is low, which will make it easier for you to buy more units of the item you want to print. The savings in production costs are lower compared to other printing techniques because the consumption of paints, inks, pads and clichés or plates is also very low. This is why pad printing solves many problems in the personalization of inexpensive promotional objects. If you want a higher density of color printing, we recommend screen printing.
- It is useful for stamping on small objects, such as customized USB sticks, whatever the size of the article and the printing area.
- As mentioned before, you can have the design printed on a flat surface and the pad will transfer it to an object with any type of surface, be it flat, spherical, textured, concave, convex, etc. Take a look at the result in our custom pens.
- The result of pad printing is a very durable impression of the design, with a great definition of the details. If your logo has very small details, they will be stamped with quality on, for example, the sidebars of the sunglasses.
- The ink we use is durable and dries without having to wait days, especially on articles made of synthetic materials.