Tagless Printers
Cylindrical Inkjet Printers
UV Flatbed Printers
Pad Printing Machines
Pretreatment Systems
Software
Laser Plate-Makers
Inkjet Printing Supplies
Pad Printing Supplies
Tagless SuppliesBlog
Have you sought out Inkcups because you have a unique item you wish to print on? Is that item made of rubber, fabric, or polyurethane? Or simply put, is it flexible? Here at Inkcups we strive to print on any material or substrate you can throw at us. Pad printers can accommodate printing many “non-traditional” print jobs. Whether it be stress balls, helmets, face masks, recycling bins, or skateboard wheels we can get you up and running for pad printing with flexible ink.
As we often stress, the right choice of ink is imperative to the printing process to ensure a long lasting final product. Please do not hesitate to consult our ink specialists for any questions you may have.
If you were to print with a rigid ink on a stress ball, with the primary function of the stress ball is to squeeze to relieve stress, you would increase the stress of the user when the ink immediately peels and cracks into their hand. That’s why understanding the function of your product, the material of your product, and matching those to a type of specially formulated ink is so important. Flexible inks are created to have excellent adhesion to rubber-like materials, as well as apparel.
Pad printers are notorious for accommodating products that are otherwise troublesome to print on. For instance, a pad printer is a great printing machine to use when looking to print on hard hats, which are both bulky and curved in nature.
If you’re this far into the blog post you probably know the basics of pad printing… but if not let’s cover it quickly. Pad printing is the process of printing a 2D image on a 3D product by inking an etched plate with an ink cup, having a pad pick up that inked design, and transferring the design from the pad to the product. Pad printing has been around for the last 200 years and has remained relevant due to its versatility and reliability.
The key to printing on items of flexible nature is flexible ink. A stress ball is of zero use if the design cracks the first time it is squeezed! Our SB Pad Printing Ink line is fast drying, fast curing, and flexible. The SB ink line was specially formulated for rubber, polyurethane-based materials, flexible substrates alike, and textiles.
Due to its flexible nature, SB ink will move with the substrate and promises not to crack during intended use.
The SB Series Ink is non-toxic, and free of heavy metals due to the choice of pigments used. There is a wide variety of colors available in this line, including 5 metallic shades! The line is complete with 23 standard colors, 2 high density colors, the previously mentioned metallic shades as well as Pantone shades of Cool Grey 6, Cool Grey 9, High-Density Black, and SuperWhite.
This line of ink is a great choice for a wide variety of applications including sporting goods like baseballs, hockey pucks, and basketballs. Print on skateboard wheels, garden hose nozzles, silicone wristbands, ID cards, binders, and koozies. Another common application for the SB ink line is apparel. Have you considered just how much your shirt moves with you throughout the day- all thanks to a flexible ink!
All of Inkcups’ pad printers can be loaded with flexible inks. Lets explore some of our pad printers:
One of our most popular pad printers is the B100 1-Color Tabletop Pad Printing Machine. Don’t let the compact size mislead you, it offers a great solution for printing one color designs on plastic parts, promotional products, apparel, and industrial parts. The B100 is a high-speed pad printing machine, with an average production speed of 900- 1300 impressions per hour.
Compared to other pad printers of comparable size, the B100 shines due to its tool-less setup. This frees up wasted time fiddling on the machine to support rapid job changeover.
On the other end of the pad printing line spectrum, the 2506 Heavy Duty 6-color Pad Printing Machine with Shuttle Table was created with high output in mind. As the name states, it is a heavy duty, six color pad printer with all the bells and whistles. Much like the B100 the 2506 can also be setup without the use of any tools. The 2506 hosts six ink cups of the 90 mm size which can print images up to 80 mm in diameter.
Between the B100 and 2506 pad printers we have many other pad printers. Inkcups has you covered whether you wish to print one to six colors, up to 7.5″ artwork, and parts as tall as 11.8″. Have you explored our Pad Printing Machine page yet? On the left hand side of screen there is an excellent interactive feature that allows you a customized experience finding the right pad printer for your specific needs.
Think pad printing with flexible ink is in your future? Contact a sales representative in your area today to ask how to get started.
Back to Blog Home
Add Your Comment