Pad Printing

Pad Printing is sometimes also called "Tampo", "Tampo Printing", and/or "Transfer Pad Printing"

Pad printing is used for decorating products in many industries including medical, automotive, promotional, apparel, electronics, appliances, sports equipment and toys. It can also be used to deposit functional materials such as conductive inks, adhesives, dyes and lubricants.

Pad printing which is similar to lithography in that an image is transferred from one surface to another is comprised of three major components: pad, ink and cliché. The cliché is made of a hard polymer or steel material and is configured with the desired design etched less than 1/1000th of an inch (25 micrometres) deep into it to act as a "reservoir" for the ink. The pad, typically made from a silicone rubber, first presses against the surface of the cliché. The pad picks up the design and transfers it by pressing against the object.

Physical changes within the ink film both on the cliché and on the pad allow it leave the etched image area in favor of adhering to the pad, and to subsequently release from the pad in favor of adhering to the substrate (material being printed).

The unique properties of the silicone pad enable it to pick the image up from a flat plane and transfer it to a variety of surface (i.e. flat, cylindrical, spherical, compound angles, textures, concave surfaces, convex surfaces)