Pad Printer
Overview
Pad printing or tampo printing follows a simple process. A design is etched into a printing plate and is then filled with ink. Then a rubber pad will pick up the ink and transfer it to the surface that is to be printed on.

Pad printers were originally developed in Switzerland to decorate the faces of watches. Now pad printers are used in multiple applications to decorate the surface of objects. Advances in technology continue to lead to new developments in the pad printing industry and are paving the way for innovative ways to use pad printers in the future.

What’s New
• Inks: One of the most recent and advantageous developments in pad printer kits is the use of UV curable inks. These inks contain thirty percent solvents so that the ink is tacky enough to be picked up by the all American pad printer. Some benefits of UV curable inks include high chemical and mechanical resistance of the cured ink print and faster drying times. Mouse pad printers and pad printers for bar codes rely on this new technology because it uses less energy than traditional inks that require hot air driers.

• Equipment: High end pad printers are now utilizing servo driven mechanisms on their machines. This allows you to recall print jobs with ease. It also reduces errors significantly. These mechanisms are not available on cheap pad printers, but servo driven feeding systems are an affordable alternatives.

What the Future Holds
Most experts agree that the pad printing industry is leaning towards ink jet and laser technologies to create their output in the future. These pad printers could be programmed over the internet and could be used to print on a variety of irregular objects.

Manual pad printing will be replaced by robotic arms. These mechanical components will be able to print with extreme accuracy. Some estimates claim that robotic arms will be able to have .001 millimeter positional accuracy.

Laser etching systems pad printers are also on the horizon for this industry. This will reduce the print times, which will increase volume output productivity. They will also eliminate the need for polymer plates.