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Silk Screen- and Tampon-Printing
"Colourful" presentation: The finishing touch offered to customers by rose plastics is individual and eye-catching colour printing on the tubes or boxes ordered. This is carried out in the factory 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, and to make the screen it is given a coating of special polymer. The required text or logo is transferred to the screen from a negative.
The exposed areas harden out to form an ink-impermable coating on the screen, whilst 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 prewarmed 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. Furthermore, very small print can be better achieved by tampon printing. If necessary two-colour printing can be done - in one operation. Printing inks used are basicly 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 finally dried off in a heated chamber.
- Tampon Printing
