Pad printing is used for decorating products of all sorts of shapes and sizes. This process is used in the medical, automotive, promotional, electronics, appliances, toy industry and many more.

With pad printing, there are three major components: pad, ink and cliché. The cliché is made of a hard polymer or steel material and the desired design is etched less than 1/1000th of an inch deep into it. This cliché is the reservoir for the ink to sit into and creates the shape of the design to be wicked up by the pad.

The pad, typically made from a silicone rubber, first presses against the surface of the cliché. The pad then picks up the design from the ink reservoir and transfers it by pressing against the object being printed. The pad releases the ink in favor of adhering to the substrate (material being printed).

The unique properties of the silicone pad enable it to pick the image up from a flat plane and transfer it to a variety of surface (i.e. flat, cylindrical, spherical, compound angles, textures, concave surfaces, convex surfaces) This rare property allows this process to work for many different types of products and materials.

Call us today to help you finish off your product with a professional Pad Printed decal surface!