Choosing a Pad Printing Machine

How to decide what pad printing machine to buy

To enable you to judge which press to buy, you will at least need answers to all of the questions shown under Purchasing Considerations. Most are obvious, but incorrect assumptions can be very expensive. When you are satisfied that you understand your own printing needs thoroughly, look for the following 20 factors from your suppliers and their equipment:

1. Good technical support
2. Sturdy machine construction
3. Ease of adjustment of all press functions
4. Enough distance between pad holder and ctiche to accept a sufficient depth of pad
5. Doctor-blade holder able to take flexible blades as well as rigid, with a provision that the flexible blade can be set at a shallower angle
6. A large enough cliche area for the pad to fully spread outside the image area.
7. The output rate for prints of acceptabte quality (not the cycle time of the machine)
8. Pad dwell, which enables you to adjust the precise speed of pickup and print actions as well as the speed of the pad stroke
9. Pickup and print positions that can be adjusted both front to back and side to side
10. Fast setup and teardown
11. Cost of spare ink wells, spatulas, pad holders, blade holders, etc.
12. For multicolour applications, X, Y, and rotational adjustment on each cliche
13. X, Y, rotational, and height adjustment for the fixture
14. Easy cleanup
15. Easy access to ail operational parts of the machine
16. Standard pneumatic, electrical, and electronic components
17. In-house maintenance plan or service contract
18. Cost of replacement cups
19. Ability of cup edges to be remachined
20. Good technical support (I've repeated this one on purpose)

And finally ....

Before you purchase a machine, atways have several suppliers carry out print trials for you. (Obviously, you must have enough of the part on hand to send to these vendors - they can't do meaningful trials on a part that hasn't been prototyped yet.) Give your suppliers sufficient time to carry out these tests, but insist on being there to see the final trials run. Unless you are an expert, never accept that "it will get better in production." If your supplier cannot achieve an acceptable result, it is unlikely that you can. Agree with your supplier on a standard that is achievabk in production. Talk to other people who have purchased from the same vendor.

Lastly don't think of the press as a standalone machine. It must fit into your entire production process. Product must flow efficiently to and from the machine. Cleaning, setup, changeover, and all the other factors of actually using the machine in your shop must be taken into consideration. If you follow these guidelines and the recommendations from previous articles, you'l1 have a sound pr-ess in your shop that will provide effective, repeatable results.