Pad Printing Equipment

The best place to buy or sell used printing equipment is online. Commercial print shop owners seeking to buy or sell machinery don't have to spend hours reading the want ads or pounding the pavement. Wholesale graphic arts websites offer industry professionals a wide range of good quality, refurbished machines, including pad printing equipment, web-fed offset presses, bindery and finishing machines, screen printers, prepress machines, and newer digital presses. Consumables, such as latex and oil-based inks, solvents, fixatives, cleansers, and replacement parts are also available online. Print shop owners upgrading to newer machines can find a ready market for buyers of high quality machinery. But commercial equipment is expensive and can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, because of superior quality and durable construction, refurbished units are still very good buys. Buyers can comparison shop online vendors with ease, selecting the best equipment for the money. Some Internet suppliers also offer technical advice, leasing, and financing options to help buyers make the best decisions.

Finding high quality refurbished equipment locally is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Sellers may list used printing equipment in classified newspaper ads, but a classified ad doesn't allow buyers to get enough information to make wise choices. The advantage to dealing with a wholesale Internet vendor is that buyers don't have to bid or buy in the dark. Flexible Internet advertising allows vendors and equipment suppliers to feature full descriptions, color photographs, streaming demonstration videos, and links to more information. Buyers can usually view a video including a hands-on demonstration after reviewing online specifications. Purchasing used printing equipment is really a smart move. Units may be refurbished, but most vendors offer limited warranties on high quality presses, cutters, binders, and folders that have withstood heavy usage and yet, have decades of use left. New companies just opening up shop usually cannot afford to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into new equipment, but refurbished machines purchased from reputable dealers can give them a good head start in a lucrative field.

Pad printing equipment, used for imprinting two-dimensional graphics onto three-dimensional irregularly shaped items, is in high demand. Specialty printing companies earn their bread and butter from machines that can imprint anything from coffee mugs, soccer balls, and pens, to computer cases, telephones, and aerosol cans. Nearly every industry, including automotive, electrical, agricultural, and retail utilizes merchandise which must be imprinted with a company logo, serial number, or alphabet, in the case of computer keyboards. Traditional methods, such as web offset, digital, or flexography, are designed to print on flat surfaces and are incapable of imprinting irregular objects. But pad printing uses a unique process, similar to offset printing, to cause ink to adhere to three-dimensional objects using one, two, or four-color processes.

Invented in the 1960s, pad printing equipment transfers images, such as logos and lettering, onto three-dimensional items that are round, cylindrical, flat, or textured. Original artwork is first etched onto a metal or photopolymer plate, which comes in contact with inverted ink cups that fill the etched image with sticky ink. The metal plate, with its inked image, then offsets onto pads constructed of molded rubber; hence the term, "pad printing." The rubber pad's flexibility enables it to wrap around or conform to the irregular shape of three-dimensional objects, such as cups, toy cars, keyboards, ballpoint pens, and basketballs. When the rubber pad makes contact with the irregularly shaped object to be imprinted, the ink is released onto the object and dries almost instantly. The result is a beautifully imprinted item ready for use or resale. Similarly, God imprints the image of His Son Christ Jesus upon our spirits when we accept Him as Savior. "The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly" (I Corinthians 15:47-49).

Commercial print shop owners who serve specialty advertising companies, manufacturers, and retailers may purchase used equipment to imprint objects of all kinds. Several different presses have different applications depending on the type of material to be imprinted. When it comes to imprinting on clothing, direct to garment machines include silk screen, dye sublimation, and the newer digital presses. High gloss pamphlets, brochures, catalogs and magazines require production with high speed web offset presses. Web offset presses can produce much higher volumes than sheet fed offset presses, which are more suitable for small runs of newsletters, pamphlets, and brochures printed on non-coated paper stock. Quite a bit of used printing equipment was originally crafted in Germany and are precision-calibrated to produce accurately registered, four-color process publications. Proper registration of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black produce the crisp full color images that make brochures, annual reports, and mailers so appealing. Without the capability of precisely registering and overlaying process color inks, commercial print shops might as well go out of business.

Because presses are so exactingly crafted, used machinery, including pad printing equipment, is an investment that can more than pay for itself in the long run. A good quality publication used as part of an advertising or promotional campaign can net hundreds of thousands of dollars in consumer sales. A full color annual report with spot varnishes, die cuts, and blind embossing can motivate wealthy philanthropists to donate a hospital wing or new public school to a community. As long as the need for visual communication exists, there will be demand for press production of the printed word. Whether commercial print shop owners buy the latest digital or used printing equipment, the expense is well worth the aesthetic value and monetary reward inherent in the industry.

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