Selecting the Correct Cliché for Your Pad Printing Job
Polymer or steel, single or double exposure — what actually decides the choice, and why the machine you run changes the answer.
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Perspectives
Industry insights from the EPS shop floor.
Direct-to-object printing has changed more in the last five years than in the previous twenty. Here's what we've learned shipping production cells across packaging, medical, industrial, and sporting goods.
Printing on Drinkware: What Makes Direct-to-Shape So Challenging
Drinkware is designed first for function, not decoration. The material, pretreatment and automation realities that decide whether direct-to-shape printing will actually work on your parts.
Read →How Pretreatment Improves Print Quality and Adhesion in Direct-to-Object Printing
Pretreatment prepares a product’s surface so ink wets out evenly and bonds reliably. Here’s how surface energy, contamination and method choice — flame, plasma, corona — drive print quality and adhesion in direct-to-object production.
Read →The Future of Direct-to-Object (DTO) Printing — Delivering Automation and ROI
The real cost is labor. The right question for DTO isn't whether the printer hits quality — it's how quickly automation engineers labor out of the cell.
Read →How Do I Choose the Right Industrial Inkjet Printer?
Five criteria — quality, throughput, size, substrate, color count — and how each one bends the recommendation toward single-pass or multi-pass.
Read →It's Not (Just) About the Printer: What Our 100th Single-Pass Inkjet System Really Taught Us
The 100th single-pass milestone, marked in Munich. Why the print engine was never the product — and what the next 100 will look like.
Read →How Can I Print Direct-to-Objects? Printing on Shapes — Expanding What's Possible in DTO Manufacturing
Curves, recesses, surface energy, and the robotics that handle them. A primer on how DTO works on real industrial parts.
Read →Moving with the Times — The Future of Industrial Inkjet
The print mechanism is no longer the bottleneck. Peripheral systems — part handling, orientation, inspection — are. Notes from Printing United 2025.
Read →Why Partner With EPS
Print consultant first, equipment vendor second. How EPS chooses between analog and digital based on the application — not the catalog.
Read →All Fired Up: Pad Printing on Glassware
Frit inks vs acrylic inks for decorating glass — kiln-fired durability and dishwasher-safe finishes.
Read →Cold Foil Printing vs. Hot Foil Stamping — What's the Difference?
Two methods of adding metallic finishes to packaging. One uses a die; the other uses UV adhesive jetted by an inkjet head.
Read →Six Reasons to Convert to Digital Inkjet Product Marking
No contact, no clichés, no setup, variable data, less waste, leaner inventory. The six-line case for switching to inkjet.
Read →What Is "Drop-on-Demand" Printing?
Continuous inkjet (CIJ) sprays a constant stream and recirculates the excess. Drop-on-demand (DOD) jets ink only when needed. Here's why EPS picks DOD.
Read →"No Two Print Machines Are Alike" — What Does That Mean?
Why EPS designs every machine from a blank sheet — and the four diagnostic questions that drive every quote.
Read →Custom Automation Solutions at EPS — What Does That Mean?
Bespoke means "made for a particular customer or user." Here's what that looks like on the EPS shop floor.
Read →Direct-to-Object Printing Equipment — It's What We Do
Drinkware to automotive trim, light bulbs to consumer packaging. DTO eliminates the label and shortens the supply chain.
Read →EPS Helps Catheter Manufacturer Increase Capacity
A specialized KE13-based catheter pad printer for Zeus — built to support a multimillion-dollar capacity expansion.
Read →Reshoring, ROI, and the Role of Digital Inkjet in the Marking Mix
Manufacturers are bringing secondary decoration in-house. Why digital inkjet earns its place when the supply chain comes home.
Read →Anti-Counterfeit Packaging: A Primer
Overt, covert, forensic. Three tiers of brand-protection security features — and what each one means for pharma and consumer goods.
Read →Custom Industrial Inkjet Printers — Behind the Build
Interview with Kevin Metcalfe, EPS Applications Engineer. How a custom inkjet build comes together from sample to FAT.
Read →Inkjets: How Do I Choose the Right Inkjet Printer?
Five decision factors — quality, throughput, part size, substrate, color count — that pick the platform.
Read →Seconds Matter — The ROI of an Additional 400 Parts Per Hour
If your current line yields $1/part at 800/hr and a new inkjet system yields $3/part at 1,200/hr, the math runs to $5.6M/year.
Read →Find the Bottleneck — Throughput Lessons From an FDA Vial Decision
When the FDA approved Moderna to pack 14 doses per vial instead of 10, US vaccine capacity rose 20%. Find the constraint; don't just add machines.
Read →Customer Story: Hodges Badge Company Converts to Cold-Foil Printing
A 100-year-old family business cuts lead time from two days to two hours by converting from hot-foil stamping to cold-foil digital.
Read →Customer Story: Mitec Enginy Integrates Inkjet Printing into the Production Line
A Catalan automation firm partnered with EPS to print on wood blocks at production speed — XD-70 tailored to spec.
Read →Pad 101: Getting the Most Out of Your Pad-Printing Pad
Substrate prep, cleaning protocols, storage practices. How to push a pad past 100,000 impressions.
Read →Pad Printing Pads — Is Pad Size Important?
Yes. Size the pad 10–20% larger than the image — and learn when to switch to hollow, dual-hardness, or inflatable pads.
Read →Print Pad Durometer — Same Thing as Hardness?
Durometer = hardness. Albert Shore named it in the 1920s. Here's the color-code chart pad makers use and how to pick the right pad for the part.
Read →A Long and Happy Print-Pad Life
One customer ran 250,000 cycles per pad using EPS's rotation method — saving $12K/year. The cheapest pad is the one you don't replace.
Read →Servo-Driven Pad Printers vs Pneumatic Pad Printers
Two advantages of servo over pneumatic: speed and recipe-driven flexibility. When the hybrid configuration makes sense.
Read →Save on Pad-Printing Ink — The Ink Saver Ring
EPS's Ink Saver Ring fits inside sealed ink cups, agitates ink across the cliché, and keeps print quality even when the ink volume drops below 25 g.
Read →Ink Adhesion, Part 1 — General Education
Adhesion is ink that sticks to a known specification. An ink that bonds to one PP product may not bond to another. Where the work begins.
Read →Ink Adhesion, Part 2 — Bi-Component Inks, Pre-Treatment, and Post-Cure
Plasma, corona, flame, chemical primer. Four ways to lift the surface energy of polyolefin substrates so the ink can bond.
Read →Ink Adhesion, Part 3 — Ink Mixing, Contamination, Blooming, and Mold Release
Operator handling, mold release residue, and plasticizer bloom defeat adhesion long after the ink is right. Four hidden causes to chase.
Read →When Is Automation Right for Your Pad-Printing Business? (Part 1)
Four diagnostics — growth constraint, ROI, labor costs, strategic expansion — that say it's time to automate.
Read →When Is Automation Right? (Part 2 — Two Endings)
A widget maker has a $350K decision. The happy ending: $300K profit boost, 14 new hires. The sad ending: shutdown, supply-chain casualties.
Read →Increase Pad-Print Throughput — When Seconds Matter
Going from a 4-second to a 3-second cycle compounds across shifts and years. Operator loading, not the printer, is usually the constraint.
Read →Secure Inkjet Printing to Combat Product Counterfeiting, Piracy, and Diversion
5–8% of world trade is counterfeit. 5–7% of medicines are fake. PhotoSecure SmartDye + DNA Matrix taggants ride on the variable-data print.
Read →Vaping Crisis Highlights the Need for Anti-Counterfeit Packaging
800+ vaping illnesses, 8 deaths — linked to black-market THC cartridges. Industrial inkjet's QR + variable data answer the cannabis-market security gap.
Read →Pad Printing — It's All About the Pad
Pad size, shape, hardness, and environment. Four variables that turn a silicone rubber blob into a precision tool.
Read →Customer Stories: Two Industrial Printing Solutions
In-mold automotive decoration on the KP-08, plus a plastic injection molder cutting changeover from 45 minutes to seconds with industrial inkjet.
Read →Choosing a Mixing Cup for Pad Printing
The wrong cup material contaminates the ink. Four to avoid, two to use, and how to test the unknown.
Read →Ergonomics in the Printing Environment
Ergonomics is the science of work — workplace, operator, equipment. How to evaluate each on a print cell.
Read →How to Prevent UV Curing From Damaging Print Heads
Reflective substrates bounce UV back into the printhead. Five preventative measures — dark fixtures, low UV power, flat substrates, regular nozzle checks.
Read →Pad Printing in Multiples — 8,000 Parts/Hour on a KP05
A customized KP05 prints eight pieces per stroke. Bowl feeder upstream, infrared drying downstream — high-volume production with minimal operator involvement.
Read →Ink Mixing for Pad Printing
Right cup, right scale, right ratio. Seven rules for ink mixing that protect print quality and production schedules.
Read →Stuck With Pre-Treating for Adhesion?
Low-surface-energy polyolefins need pretreatment. Four options — special inks, chemical wiping, flame, corona/plasma — and the trade-offs.
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