Silk Screen- and Tampon-Printing

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Silk Screen and Tampon-Printing

rose plastic can enhance the appearance of the product by adding the customers name, logo or other informative information to the packaging. This is accomplished after the manufacturer of the packaging by one of two different methods, silk-screen or tampon printing processes.

Silk Screen Printing

: Silk-Screen Printing

In the silk-screen process, the printing on the packaging is achieved by forcing a thick ink-paste (5) evenly through the mesh of the screen (3), with a special plastic blade (1). The print screen comprises a fine mesh material stretched over a wooden or metal frame (2). The screen can be of silk, synthetics or metal. The required text or logo is transferred to the screen from a negative.

The exposed areas harden out to form an ink impermeable coating on the screen, while the unexposed areas (4) remain soft and washable. During the printing process the ink is stencilled through these soft open parts of the screen onto the product. Finally the printed articles (6) are dried in a heated chamber. In the case of Polyethylene (PE) products, these must always be prepared by flaming the articles, to ensure good print adhesion. The great advantage of silk-screen printing is that it offers excellent ink density.

Tampon Printing

Tampon printing is a sort of stamping process whereby the ink is taken from an etched metal plate onto a flexible pad - the tampon - and "stamped" onto the article to be printed. The technique is a good alternative if the surface of the product to be printed, does not allow silk-screen printing. When very small printing is required it can be better achieved by using the tampon printing process. If necessary, two color printing can also be done in one operation. Printing inks used are basically the same as those used in silk-screen printing: however the print density of the ink is considerably less. As with the silk-screen process, PE products have to be flamed prior to printing and cured in a heated chamber.