Pad Printing Tips: Production Speed

You’re not ready to invest in faster equipment yet. Still, you wish you could increase your number of imprints by end of day. A simple way for pad printers to increase their production speed, which in turn increases print volume, is to change your operating speed.

Here’s one way  how:

Maximizing Speed Means Minimizing Strokes

1. Minimize your stroke by increasing the base height of the pad so the pickup stroke on the cliché starts from about 10mm or less above the cliché.

2. Then bring the part fixture as close to the pad surface as possible to minimize the print stroke as well.

3. Make sure that the end-of-cylinder stroke dampeners are open enough to do some cushion work, but not so much that they slow down the stroke of the cylinder.

This concept applies to all pad printers. The closer the pad begins from the surface of the substrate, the faster they will connect and move on.

Keep Your Part-Loading Area Clear

Try to design your tooling so that the part being printed is slid into a cavity, thus preventing the pad on the print side from causing a loading obstruction. PPMOVT has machines where this is not an issue. The clichés move back and forth and the pad, in its stopped position, is back away from the print surface.

Follow these tips and you’ll find your business with extra product by day’s end.