Sharp Doctors

Doctor system

A doctor system has an ink reservoir from which opened a flood bar draws ink on a printing plate and a sharp scraper wipes the plate clean. With this system, the ink is exposed to air, allowing the solvents to evaporate slowly changing the viscosity of the ink. Several types of machines are the attempts to create "covered" inkwells but it does not decrease significantly change the consistency of the ink.

Squeegee systems have been successful and popular that there is short-run (fewer parts 500-1000), a number of color changes, and machine operators who understand the nuances of the ink preparation. These machines are common in the plastic housing, golf balls and promotional products market. An important advantage of the system clears the sealed ink cup system is that it can easily print images of long (eg plastic housings like a television screen, computer or vacuum), since he ' are no significant limitations on how large scrape the plate can be made.

Sealed ink system

An ink system Cup seal is essentially and inverted cup that is filled with ink and uses the cutting edge of the cup as a printing plate wiping system. The sealed ink cup system floods and doctors (wipes) a printing plate in the same motion, dramatically limiting the exposure of ink in the air, thus limiting solvent evaporation and viscosity changes ink. Consequently, the process becomes much more predictable and manageable so less experienced operators are able to operate equipment more efficiently.

And with recent developments in sealed inkwell machines became able to print the image along. A rail system, which can be mounted on a machine, cutting sweeps from left to right across the length of the image. It works extremely well for mid-quality images and has been the method of choice in the medical field for printing the catheter. This technology was actually developed and patented by the author and became adopted as a standard feature on most machines ink cups on the market today.

The larger size ink cups for "standard" machines are generally Pad 135mm or 5 "diameter, which prints on a 4.5" diameter image. Custom ink cups - which is much more expensive than regular ones - can go up to about 250 mm in diameter (10 "), which can print a 9" diameter image items such as balls, circular saw blades and satellite dishes.

For efficient production, it makes sense to use a cup of ink in the immediate production, while the other is removed and washed on the side. The disadvantage of this arrangement is that the ink cups can be very expensive, especially when purchased by manufacturers of machinery, but there are places to buy ink cups at a fair price if you are looking for.

The pad printing marketplace has become more mature over the last ten years and the quality of products on the market is very high, so whatever type of machine - doctor blade or Sealed Ink Cup - you're bound to have experience very successful with pad and transfer.