Your Pad Printing Explainer

The Step-By-Step of Pad Printing

1. 

   Laser engrave your design into a metal plate or use a photopolymer plate (similar to how emulsion stencils work in screen printing.) The plate is called a cliché.

2. 

   Most modern pad printing machines use a cup to add the ink to your plate. Fill the cup with ink, put the plate on top so the design is covered by the cup, and flip like you would to get a cake out of a pan onto a plate.

3. 

   Secure the cup and plate in the pad printing machine, and position your product ready for printing.

4. 

   As you slide the cup back, it scrapes off excess ink (a process called doctoring) and reveals the ink-filled design. The top layer of the ink is exposed to the air, which makes it sticky.

5. 

   Dip the pad down to collect the ink.

6. 

   The exposed layer of ink on the silicone pad reacts with the air and gets sticky. Dip the silicone pad down onto the product, stamping it with the design.

7. 

   Your pad printed product is ready!

Products You Can Pad Print

Pad printing is one of the most flexible printing methods – literally, because the silicone pad can conform around lots of different shapes. That means it can deposit ink in otherwise hard-to-reach spots without special equipment, unlike screen printing, which works best on flat surfaces.

That said, pad printing doesn’t work on every shape. The design is laid out flat, so it can get distorted when applied to a 3D object – like how it’s hard to put stickers on a round surface without getting creases. Given this, pad printing works best with smaller designs, since there’s less gradient change and therefore less chance for distortion.

Another useful feature of pad printing is that you can adapt your printing process to suit different materials by adjusting the ink to make it more or less sticky. With the right mix, you can print on metal, plastic, wood, textiles, and even food. Although pad printing works on most plastics, polypropylene and polyethylene require pretreatments, because they’re so slippery the ink won’t stick.

Here are some of the objects we pad print on, to give you an idea of how versatile pad printing really is:

• Stress balls

• Pens

• Rubber ducks

• Key fobs

• Lighters

• Chip clips

• Bottle openers

• Mugs

• Paper fans

• Flashlights

• Pencil sharpeners

• Ornaments

• Tape measures

• Sunglasses

• Smartphone Wallets

The Pros and Cons of Pad Printing

If it’s not clear already, we think pad printing is pretty cool. It has a lot of pros – and, OK, yes, a few cons too.

Pros of Pad Printing

• Can add fine details to small objects.
• Can print on oddly shaped products because the pad bends easily.
• Works on a range of materials, including plastics, metals, fabrics, wood, and food.
• You can do multiple colors by adding more pads, although that may increase the cost.
• Easy to get a consistent design over and over.
• The silicone pads last a long time – at least 50,000 impressions, if you look after them.
• Durable, as long as it’s the right ink for your product.

Cons of Pad Printing

• Works best on small areas, because this reduces distortion and uses less ink, which will help the design print clearer.
• The ink will eventually erode with use.
• Design can become distorted on curved objects.

The Bottom Line

Pad printing is a simple but effective way to add custom designs to a wide range of products. It’s particularly useful on weirdly shaped items, and easily adaptable for different materials. Next time you’re wondering how someone managed to print all that information on a teeny tiny space, now you know it was probably pad printed.