Shapewear is a new trend hitting the apparel industry. Shapewear comes in many forms, it is mostly referred to as underwear/undergarments. Lingerie is also a form of shapewear. With all of these tight fitting clothes, it makes perfect sense to print tagless labels using the ICN-2200 pad printing machine.

Tagless printing on shapewear has many benefits such as:
• No cracking on the label
• No annoying bump where the tag lies
• No Ribbon labels (those annoying labels usually located on the side of the inside of clothes)
• No grin through (reduces visibility on the outside of the clothing where the tag is)

You can always look great and feel comfortable at the same time, especially with tagless printing!

Click here to submit any questions on tagless printing on shapewear! The consultation is free of charge, no strings attached!

Printer used in this project:
Type: Semi-Automatic Pad Printer
Brand: ICN-2200
Model: Two Color
Standard applications: neck tagless labels, pens, stress balls, other metal and plastic parts…
Unconventional applications: cookies, contact lenses
More info: ICN-2200 Tagless Pad Printer Page

Technorati tags: Shapewear, pad printing, Tagless Apparel

Check out these great uniforms! Know what the best part is? That’s right! they’re tagless!

Tagless printing on uniforms are essential for professionals to look professional. There is no tag sticking out of the uniform or poking through the back. Look at the pictures of the scrubs, employees are often wearing just these uniforms for long periods of time. It is important that the people wearing these feel comfort. Thanks to tagless printing, there are no more annoying tags that stick into the back of the neck and provide discomfort!

Click here to submit any questions on tagless printing on uniforms! The consultation is free of charge, no strings attached!

Printer used in this project:
Type: Semi-Automatic Pad Printer
Brand: ICN-150
Model: Two Color

Standard applications: neck tagless labels, pens, stress balls, other metal and plastic parts…
Unconventional applications: cookies, contact lenses
More info: ICN-150 Tagless Pad Printer Page

Technorati tags: Uniforms, tagless, Tagless printing

You may have never heard of Pad Printing… yet it practically surrounds you!

Did you know that many of the colorful and interesting icons and graphics that make up our daily experience are created with pad printing technology? With pad printing, it is easy to add fun graphics and colorful art to almost any object including your own body! See for yourself. You might start the day off by putting on your new T-shirt and noticing that the tickly-scratchy neck label has been replaced by a neat and unnoticeable printed one. While brushing your teeth you may glance at your dentist’s name on the handle, chances are you owe this friendly reminder to pad printing. How about getting into your car? Changing the radio station or making a left hand turn? Take a good look at the text and graphics on the inside of your car, these are all pad printed. The logo on golf balls you hit into the woods, the graduations on a syringe that take your blood and the souvenirs you buy at a game are all pad printed. Many of the fascinating images you see around you were pad printed.

– READ MORE!

Are you struggling with keeping opened pad or screen printing ink and hardener fresh?
We have a convenient solution: the VersaCover! Don’t miss our commercial to air at the Super Bowl. Here is a sneak preview, just for you:

The VersaCover hermetically seals nearly all ink and hardener cans available on the market.
READ MORE

This ICN tagless label is printed on a flock material, which is used for all kinds of apparel like daywear, outerwear and activewear, and is much like fleece to the touch.

Due to its “fuzzy” texture, the flock material definitely posed a challenge for printing a tagless label, but by using the good old “Trial and Error” approach our pad printing specialists managed to quickly find a solution to the problem

We found that they key to successful printing on difficult garments , such as flock material, is by controlling these variables:

• Depth of printing plate
• Speed of the thinner
• Printing pad durometer
• Machine cycle

We used our ICN-150 tagless label printing machine and the tagless pad printing ink was from the SB series, mixed with 20% of M Thinner.

If you have any questions or need advice about tagless printing and its applications, please give us a call at 978-646-8980!

Printer used in this project:
Type: Semi-Automatic Pad Printer
Brand: ICN-150
Model: Two Color
Standard applications: neck tagless labels, pens, stress balls, other metal and plastic parts…
Unconventional applications: cookies, contact lenses
More info: ICN-150 Tagless Pad Printer Page

Technorati tags: Flock Material, Cotton Flock, Tagless Apparel

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 the 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.

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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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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

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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Here at Inkcups Now we often get special orders for Top Secret projects. That’s all we can say at the moment. We don’t want to get into trouble…

Both items were pad printed with 3 different colors using our very own ICN-150. Paul began by etching the artwork onto a plate using the Cobalt 1000 while Pete mixed up the colors in the ink lab. After pouring the ink into the cups, Paul set them up on the plates. The choice of pads is very important as it needs to have the correct shape, size, and durometer for each part.

Before printing the objects need to be adjusted for the fixture to align with the printing plates. Fine tune the registration to get a perfect alignment of each color and we are good to go!

Here are some speculations about where these parts actually go: Space-Shuttle, Shrinking Device, Giant Laser Gun… And Derek just doesn’t know what to think of it!

Any other suggestions of what the objects could be???

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