Heat Transfer Printing Process for Plastic Square Buckets by heat transfer machine
Heat transfer printing is a decorative technique in the specialty printing industry that best showcases the richness of colors. First, the design to be transferred is printed onto a PET film using a gravure printing machine. Then, a thermal transfer machine uses heat and pressure to peel the design from the PET film and transfer it to the surface of the plastic product.
As is well known, gravure printing produces the thickest ink among mainstream printing processes, resulting in the highest ink saturation. Furthermore, gravure printing can print designs with up to 10 colors or more, thus achieving the highest level of realism in simulating the real world. This is the main reason why heat transfer printing machine achieves photo-realistic results.
Plastic square buckets are containers with four flat sides. While a flatbed heat transfer machine can be used to transfer the design one side at a time, this is inefficient. Changing fixtures and heat transfer films consumes a lot of time. Generally, two or three sides of the square bucket have different designs, requiring the creation of heat transfer films with different designs.
1) Flatbed Transfer Solution.
Flatbed heat transfer printing is relatively complex, but it still has a market in traditional processing companies. They typically use multiple flatbed heat transfer machines, each for one side, with each side corresponding to a specific pattern on the heat transfer film. Each machine is operated by a single person. Although this solution requires a large initial investment, printing efficiency gradually improves once a production line is established.
2) Servo Rotation Solution with servo rotary heat transfer equipment machine
For most investors, increased labor costs make them cautious about flatbed heat transfer printing. Using a automatic rotary heat transfer machine with an automatically rotating fixture is a preferred option.
A square bucket has four sides. Generally, opposite sides use the same pattern, while the other two sides use a different pattern. In special cases, the patterns on all four sides may be completely different.
The heat transfer film must be customized according to the pattern arrangement on the square bucket. The spacing between the patterns must be controlled based on the dimensions of each side of the bucket. If the patterns on all four sides are the same, then the heat transfer film is a standard heat transfer film, and the spacing between the patterns is correspondingly shortened. In short, the pattern must be able to accommodate the length of all four sides during each transfer cycle.
The core of a servo rotary heat transfer machine lies in the rotation of the clamp. Depending on the surface to be transferred, the clamp rotates the container a corresponding number of times. The built-in program can be set to rotate 4, 3, 2, or 1 times. With each rotation, the silicone roller presses down, contacting the heat transfer film and the container once, until all surfaces are printed.
The most significant advantage of a servo rotary heat transfer machine is that it requires only one operator to complete the printing process on the container, which is highly beneficial for cost reduction. Further automation and intelligentization can be achieved by configuring robotic arms for automatic loading and unloading, or by directly connecting to injection molding machines to complete the entire production line process.
