Harmony Ink Dispenser

To continue on our subject of tips and guidelines like the posts about printing pads and ceramic rings, we now want to raise awareness about pad and screen printing inks and ink mixing!

There are basically two ways to go about ink mixing; you can either pour the ink by hand or use our Harmony Ink Dispenser. The difference is that with the Dispenser, you have fine control over the amount of ink/thinners you mix (because of calibrated pumps) and ink does not get spilled around (even if your hands are shaking a little after yesterday ). Also the unmixed portions are preserved in Dispenser’s canisters instead of drying out all over the open cans. The ICN 1501 Digital Scale gives you (+/-) 0.01 gram accuracy, needed for precise measurement.

Follow these steps to achieve best possible ink mix:

• • Make sure you use unlined mixing cups (no wax) and wooden or metal mixing sticks! If you use plastic, your ink may get contaminated with plasticizers.
• • Zero the scale out and make sure its on a leveled surface. Read more

Ceramic Rings

Are you using a single-sided or double-sided ceramic ring? If you are using a single-sided ring you should look into the benefits of using a double sided instead. The most obvious reason has to do with the fact that rings can get damaged… yes, sooner or later it will happen, but if you have a double-sided ring you can simply flip the ring over and continue pad printing. If you need to re-assemble an ink cup or flip a double sided ceramic ring but not quite sure of how to do it, we have a video with easy-to-follow step-by-step instructions. Go ahead, check out our Ink Cup Assembly - Ceramic Ring Changeover video

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Worn Out Pads

Have you ever experienced problems while pad printing such as repeated misprints or voided prints? If so, your initial reaction was most likely that it was caused by the ink. However, many times it is due to the fact that the printing pad needs replacing. If your pad looks anything like those on the picture, it’s about time you get a new one!

By the way, for a limited time, we have a Buy 5 Pads Get 1 Free offer for you. Search our pad selection and call in for more details at 978-646-8981.

Common Issues Caused by Old Pad

• • All silicone pads have oil in them to pick up and transfer ink properly. If the pad dries out you may experience voids in the prints.
• • If the image is burnt into the pad that means it has dried out. This can be caused by using a high ratio of hardeners or thinners in your ink - hardeners and some thinners are aggressive to the silicone surface. This is normal and doesn’t necessarily mean that there is something wrong with your ink mix - but you will have to change your pad more often. (The life of the pad also depends on what substrates you print on, for instance, softer plastic materials is gentler to print on then hard metal objects.)
• • Pads can also get saturated with thinners, leading to poor ink pick-up. If the saturation happens, the pad will dry out quicker than it should.
• • When the pad durometer changes (due to dryness) softer pads get softer and harder pads get harder, which will also affect the outcome of the artwork.

We’ve seen a lot pads and done a lot of pad printing here at Inkcups. Our conclusion is: if you are continuing to use a deteriorated pad instead of getting a new one, you are wasting much more than you are saving because of all the misprints and aggravation.

How to Take Care of Your Printing Pad

Even the best pads won’t last forever. However, you can prolong their life by regular maintenance.
Read On

Imprinted Leather Padfolio

This kind of imprinted leather padfolio and notebook make a perfect corporate gift for your employees.  And the Mimaki UJF 605C11 inkjet printer is an excellent printer for this purpose as it has the capability of printing on dark surfaces.

Believe it or not but one of our salesmen was walking into a meeting with a client who saw this padfolio - and they loved it! They were so impressed that they are now asking for samples of their own.

The Mimaki’s printing table is 19.5×23.5 inches big and can hold 4 padfolios at once. This makes it a much more flexible and useful printer than any standard industrial ink jet printer on the market.

Imprinted notepad

The artwork exhibits excellent quality and doesn’t rub off the leather material.

It didn’t take Paul a long time to get this padfolio and notepad done. First he searched online for the right images which he then imported to the Mimaki software. Within minutes he was was ready to test-print followed by the real imprint of these leather binders.

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Imprinted Stainless Steel Bottle

Yet again, Inkcups Now has raised the standards of printing on 3 dimensional objects! We are now releasing a rotary fixture as an add-on module which enables the PromoJET inkjet printer to print 360 degrees on bottles and cylinders up to 5” high - like this stainless steel SIGG bottle. Just another innovation from Inkcups Now.

This add-on rotary module takes only 10 minutes to install and drastically raises the limits and capabilities of a typical solvent flatbed printer. Printing around the circumference of bottles, pens, drumsticks, etc is now an easy fix! If you click on the picture you will see a bigger image which shows the artwork of this SIGG stainless steel bottle in greater detail.

Why don’t you take a look at our video of our PromoJet printing on the stainless steel bottle!

Printer used in this project:
Type: Solvent flatbed inkjet printer
Brand: PromoJET
Model: With Add-on Rotary Fixture
Standard applications: Water bottles, SIGG Bottles, pencils, pens, golf balls, CDs, iPod covers…
Unconventional applications: custom guitar picks, mouse pads, stained glass, plaques…
More info: PromoJET inkjet printer page

Technorati tags: Stainless Steel Bottle, SIGG Bottle, Stainless Steel Water Bottle

Etching on Stainless Steel

The Cobalt 1000 is an extremely powerful and versatile laser engraver and this is why we used it to etch this stainless steel serial tag.

The customer wanted the etched text to be as dark as possible. To do so we used the following settings on the laser: 100 speed, 10 power, .01 hatch and 3 Loops with a frequency of 35 KHz.

After focusing the laser to the plate we manually lowered the laser head in order to get that extra dark marking.
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Letters from career day 2009

One of our indispensable sales managers, Paul Strunk was asked by his 11 year old daughter to come in for career day and talk about what he does for a living. Anyone who knows Paul also knows that he would never pass up an opportunity to crack a few jokes! He did however also have an agenda – encouraging young kids to stay in school and pursue a college degree.

Key and Dog Tag Printing

These really nice imprints were done by Paul using our Mimaki UJF 605C11 inkjet printer. The cool leopard pattern will definitely get some attention and the graphics on the custom dog tag is exceptionally clear. The size of the letters put together on the dog tag is only 0.06” high and 0.185” long, but is still very easy to read due to the exceptional quality of the inkjet printer. Click on the picture to see for yourself! Paul used a digibond primer on both of these items for it to stick better to the metal.

It took approximately 5 minutes to print one table which is big enough to hold 80 pieces at a time.

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Pad printed neck label

Tagless label printing is “IT” right now in the pad printing industry. Think about it; how many times have you cut out that annoying neck label in the back because it would either itch or stick out of the t-shirt? Tagless labels are so much cooler and better looking, and that’s what we’re all about here at Inkcups Now.

To create a tagless label, or neck label as some might call it, you will need to use a Laser Engraver and a Pad Printer. We used the Cobalt 1000 Laser Machine to engrave the plate and our ICN-150 pad printer to print the artwork. Etching the plate only takes about 5 minutes and the depth in this case was 1/1000 of an inch.

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