Pad printing flexible items, requires flexible pad printing ink. Boston Industrial Solutions, Inc is constantly working to create innovative pad printing inks for almost any substrate. In this article we will review flexible pad printing inks for printing on flexible rubber, fabrics, and polyurethanes. Examples of flexible products are silicone wristbands, stress balls, helmets, face masks, recycling bins, shoe soles, or skateboard wheels. To pad print on these products, you need a flexible ink.
Why flexible pad printing ink?
The correct pad printing ink is the key to getting a long lasting image. Each type of ink must be paired with the correct substrate. For example printing a stress ball with Natron TP series pad printing ink will not work because TP series is a rigid pad printing ink. Stress balls undergo stretch. To fix this you need an ink that will flex with the product. This is the case with neoprene. Using a rigid ink will cause the ink to crack. A flexible pad printing ink on the other hand will flex with the product. We have formulated several inks to have excellent adhesion to flexible rubber-like materials, silicone as well as apparel.
Pad printing review
Pad printing (also called tampography) is a printing process that can transfer a 2-D image onto a 3-D object. This is accomplished using an indirect offset (gravure) printing process that involves an image being transferred from the cliché via a silicone pad onto a substrate. Examples of pad printing applications include; pens, mugs, hard hats, bowling pins, etc. Check out our pad printing applications page.
Flexible ink for Pad Printing
To pad print on flexible items you must have flexible pad printing ink. Boston Industrial Solutions, Inc. manufactures several flexible inks for different substrates. We pride ourselves for developing the most versatile pad printing inks in the world. These inks are:
SE series silicone inks: This is the ultimate ink for pad printing on silicone. The SE series silicone ink is 500X flexible. This ink is flexible and will never crack under stress. Learn more about the top 7 silicone applications to print with silicone ink.
ST Series: The ST series pad printing ink is fast drying, fast curing, and flexible. It is formulated for printing on rubber and textiles. This is the ultimate ink for tagless printing.
NxT Series: NxT series is one of a kind pad printing ink. This ink works on all hard to print flexible substrates. It works on EVA, EPDM, Neoprene, polyurethane, Nitrile, Latex, and many other flexible substrates.
All of the Natron pad printing inks are non-toxic and free from heavy metals. These three ink series are available in over 20 high opacity colors, 5 metallic shades. The Silicone inks come in 40 standard colors. The ST series have 23 standard colors, high density colors, cool gray 6, cool gray 9. All the colors in ST series have very high opacity. There is no need for super-white or high density white.
Volta M150 1-Color Tabletop Pad Printing Machine
This is the most popular entry 1-Color Tabletop Pad Printing Machine. This machine is compact in size but offers a great solution for printing one color images on medical device parts, promotional products, apparel, and industrial parts. Print up to 1600 impressions per hour with this pad printing machine. This machine works well becaue it has tool-less set up which allows for a rapid job change.
Volta M4150 Heavy Duty 4-Color Pad Printing Machine
The M4150 pad printing machines is created with with high through put in mind. It has a heavy duty construction and an easy to use touch screen membrane. This machine has four 90 mm size ink cups which can print images up to 80 mm in diameter.
To learn more about our pad printing inks and pad printing machines, please call us today +1 (781) 281-2558.
