Decorating & Printing on Plastic Parts

Screen Printing

Images are transferred directly to a part by pressing ink though the image “burned” into a screen. Screen printing is the most economical choice for projects requiring a single, large image on a flat or cylindrical part. Screen printing also produces very opaque images.

Screen printing is a printing method that allows the transfer of large opaque images onto flat (or relatively flat) and cylindrical plastic, glass, and metal objects. The origins of screen printing date back thousands of years — from early Polynesian natives who forced die through cut-out patterns in banana leaves to decorate cloth, to cave walls found in France and Spain that were decorated by way of stencils and colorant applied with blowpipes, to the Japanese creating intricate designs during the Sung Dynasty (A.D 960-1280). Today, screen printing is used to decorate rigid parts for a variety of industries. 

Industrial Digital Inkjet Printing

This printing method is the most economical, eliminating all setup costs associated with films, screens, or pad printing plates. With four-color process printing, digital printing provides a limitless number of colors for plastic parts.

Unique Assembly & Decorating now offers industrial digital inkjet product decorating and printing! This cutting-edge product decorating technology is a direct-to-substrate digital inkjet process that features high precision four-color process printing plus white for plastic, glass, wood and metal substrates. 

This four-color process printing allows for virtually limitless color combinations on a product, and the white is bright enough to be used as a spot color or as a base to print on dark surfaces. The process eliminates labels (pressure sensitive or in-mold), films, printing plates, clichés or screens which dramatically lowers setup cost - a huge advantage over traditional printing methods. This printing method is used in a range of industries from medical manufacturers to injection molders.

Hot Stamping

With heat and pressure, we are able to hot stamp matte, glossy, and reflective metallic foil onto a plastic part. Hot stamping is a cost-effective way to give your part an impressive appearance.

Hot stamping (or foil stamping) is a dry process that uses heat and pressure to transfer reflective metallic foil and high gloss opaque colored foil to the part. It is also the process used to decorate raised areas and is also known as tipping. In this process, the pigment or metallic foil is transferred to raised letters or a raised area of a plastic part.

Because hot stamping is a dry process (unlike screen printing or pad printing), decorated parts can easily be bulk packed on-line with fewer concerns about damage to the decorated image -- this can save on packaging and handling costs. Polypropylene and polyethylene parts can typically be hot stamped without pretreatment which provides cost savings over pad printing and screen printing.

Heat Transfer Decal Decorating

This decorating process allows us to add a screen printed or digitally printed image to a clear part with heat and pressure of the hot stamping process. It can be a cost-effective alternative to traditional multicolor printing methods.

At Unique Assembly & Decorating, we offer heat transfer decal decorating for Plastic parts from plastic injection molders, thermoformers, extruders, and other plastic manufacturers. This can be a cost-effective alternative to multicolor pad printing or screen printing for plastic parts, depending on the required image size and the total quantity for the project. We can offer this service for medium, high volume and bulk orders. Heat transfer decals can be applied to many plastic materials such as polypropylene, polyethylene, PVC and acrylic. Depending upon the image size and the number of parts to be decorated, heat transfer decals can be a cost-effective alternative to other decorating methods, especially for larger orders.