Pad Printing on Plastic with the ICN-150 Pad Printer

Take a look at this! Would you ever think this is a part of a very expensive tool used for measurement applications?

As a matter of fact, this object is part of an extremely sophisticated measuring device called FARO Laser Tracker. We wanted to make sure the imprinted plastic artwork came out just perfect! In a matter of 4 days, Paul had pad printed enough parts to assemble $2.5 million worth of laser trackers. And as Paul nicely put it when I went to take pictures of it; “You better not drop this…!”

Our customer responsible for the markings realized that using stickers was no longer cost-efficient and that plastic pad printing was the best way to go. So for this job we used the ICN-150 pad printing machine. Paul was in charge of training our customer and making sure that the printing process was running smoothly.

The ICN-150 is a 2 color pad printer but we had five different colors and symbols to work with so it had to be done in turns; starting off with red and silver, followed by yellow and black, and finally green.

As for the pad printing ink, we went ahead with our MB series pad printing ink as it is most compatible for hard plastics. Click on the picture to see a larger view and more fine details!

Want to Learn More about pad printing? Check out our Ultimate Guide to Pad Printing Machines

Printer used in this project:

Type: Semi-Automatic Pad Printer
Brand: ICN-150
Model: Two Color
Standard applications: pens, stress balls, other metal and plastic parts…
Unconventional applications: cookies, contact lenses, tagless t-shirts
More info: ICN-150 Pad Printer Page