Glossary
What is Pad Printing?
Pad Printing, also known as Transfer Pad Printing, is a process whereby products of odd shapes, sizes, or substrates can be printed on without any sacrifice of detail. Golf ball printing is an area in which pad printing proves particularly useful. Due to the size and texture of a golf ball, other Pad Printing methods are likely not to produce the quality images that are attained through pad printing. Herein lies the benefit!
Pad Printing is similar to lithography in that an image is transferred from one surface to another. Lithography uses a rubber blanket to transfer an image to the final product, whereas pad printing utilizes a silicon pad. Due to the fact that silicon is able to conform to the surface it contacts, there is significantly more flexibility achieved in pad printing. This translates to a cleaner and more precise image on your product!
What is Screen Pad Printing?
As with pad printing, Screen Printing also provides a clean and crisp image. In fact, Screen Printing, assures an even brighter and richer image than with pad printing, although there is less flexibility with odd shaped items. On the vast majority of surfaces, you can be assured that screen printing will provide vibrant colors, durability, and high resistance to fading.
The screen printing process works by utilizing a screen frame that stores ink. The ink is then forced through the screen by a squeegee that presses the image onto the product. This allows for the thickest deposits of ink to be transposed upon the image. The result is a truly vivid finished product!
What is Hot Stamping?
Hot Stamping, as opposed to both pad printing and screen printing, is a dry printing process. The greatest strength of this method is its ability to print truly opaque images. In other words, hot stamping can deliver images that are bold enough to prevent light from penetrating them. Although hot stamping is limited to “mostly” flat surfaces, it still presents a good quality and cost effective means of satisfying your design needs.
Hot Stamping uses a heated press that stamps an image through a special metallic foil or colored foil which, by way of heat and pressure, imprints the image on the product's surface. This process leaves a clearanddurable impression.
What is Heat Transfer Decal Decorating?
Heat transfer decorating is a dry process that uses preprinted decals to decorate a particular part. Heat transfer decals provide a high quality screened image that is permanently bonded to a part by way of the hot stamping process. Before the decals can be applied to a part, the part to be decorated is analyzed so that the proper ink - lacquer - carrier construction is selected. The heat transfer decals are then printed on large gravure or screen printers on large sheets.
The cost of the heat transfer decals is dependent on size, number of colors in the image, and quantity ordered. Since the heat transfer decals are preprinted, single color or multicolor images can be transferred to the part in one hit. In addition, since multicolor images can be printed in one hit, heat transfer decals can be a cost-effective method for medium to large runs. Heat transfer decals can be applied to many substrates such as plastics, wood, coated metals, glass, painted products, leather, fabrics, and rubber.
What is Pressure Sensitive Labeling?
Our high speed cylindrical screen printer is equipped with a pressure sensitive labeler. Using this labeler, we can apply a pressure sensitive label to almost any round or oval bottle, container, or jar. We can consistently register and apply both front and back labels between the seams of cylindrical bottles; our equipment can also apply full wrap labels.
What is Dry Offset?
The Dry Offset Process provides the most satisfactory method for the high speed, large volume printing of multi-colored line copy, half-tones & full process art on preformed plastic parts. Dry offset is used primarily to print on products such as tapered cups, tubs & pails as well as tubes, jars & their respective closures (caps & lids).
Dry offset printing is similar to offset lithography in that a rubber blanket is used to transfer the image from the printing plate to the container surface. The plate used has, as in the letterpress, the image area raised above the surface of the plate. Ink is distributed through a series of rollers & onto the raised surface of the plate. The plate transfers the image to the rubber blanket, which prints the entire multicolored copy taken from one (1) to as many as eight (8) plate cylinders on the container in one operation. The “Dry” denotation of this offset system serves to differentiate it from the offset system, which uses incompatibility of water inks to “dampen” the surface of the plate or substrate to prevent ink transfer.