How does pad printing work?
In the gravure printing form (cliché), the image areas are introduced as cavities corresponding to the print image. This means that the image areas are deeper than the non-image areas. These cavities are created using various manufacturing processes. The most common today are by laser and exposure. The cliché is flooded with printing ink and removed with a doctor blade so that the printing ink remains only in the cavities.
The printing ink is transferred indirectly using an intermediate carrier (printing pad). This consists of a flexible silicone rubber mixture and thus enables adaptation to different surface shapes. Printing pads are available in various sizes, shapes and degrees of hardness. The printing pad is pressed onto the cliché and takes the ink from the cavities. In the next step, the printing pad unrolls on the printed material and thus transfers the print image. Thanks to its elasticity, even uneven surfaces are printed.