Plastic products after injection molding often require various patterns or texts to be printed on the surface.
This calls for the use of various printing techniques for surface treatment of the parts. Common printing techniques include screen printing, pad printing, lettering, and laser engraving. Today, we'll delve into the mysteries of screen printing.
Screen printing is a relatively simple technique and therefore is the most commonly used surface treatment technique for plastic parts.
Silkscreen Printing is a stenciling method that involves printing ink through stencils that are supported by a porous fabric mesh stretched across a frame called a screen. Silkscreen Printing is ideally suited for bold and graphic designs.
At Optosem, we specialize in silkscreen printing that prints directly your logo and wordings on the product packaging.
Compared with other processes, screen printing has the following characteristics:
Screen printing can be mechanized or done manually,. This method requires lower equipment and material costs compared to other printing methods. Additionally, its plate-making and printing processes are simpler.
Screen printing is flexible; it can be applied not only to flat surfaces but also to curved, spherical, or unevenly shaped objects
Due to the characteristics of screen printing, ink directly adheres to the substrate through the mesh. Depending on the substrate's requirements, various inks, coatings, pigments, or pastes can be used for printing. Other printing methods are limited by the fine particle size of pigments in ink.
Among the four major printing methods, screen printing produces thicker ink layers, resulting in rich textures and strong three-dimensional effects.
While offset, embossing, intaglio, and flexography are limited by printing format sizes, screen printing can handle large-format printing.
