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.
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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.
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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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Does this image not look laser engraved? Yet it is printed, with all its fine lines. Not only the ink looks great, you can save money with it!
Click on the image to view it closer.
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Here is ICN’s take on what Pad Printing is all about…
**Attention: all stunts in this video are done by experienced professionals, do not attempt this at home!!!**

This is Diamond Etch ink again - the ink that imitates laser engraving or sand blasting. Yesterday Pete - ICN’s Ink Master - printed this logo on a glass jar (see one of the posts above). Today, he experimented with printing on clear plastic. Despite the glare on the photo, you can probably see how nice and crisp it came out. Click on the picture to view a bigger image.
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