By John Kaverman

The most successful pad printers make use of highly efficient systems that allow for greater flexibility and better process control.
Looking back to the late 1980s, it is easy to see how the industry has evolved. At that time, pad printing was just beginning to compete with hot stamping and screen printing. Additionally, sealed ink cups had just been invented.
By the mid-90s it was not uncommon for large manufacturers to have dozens of pad printing systems dedicated to printing the same parts, over multiple shifts, for years. Meanwhile, hundreds of small contract decorators survived by running service orders. While a few of the dedicated systems featured automatic loading and unloading, the majority were manual load/unload, single-color machines with pneumatic drive systems and very little, if any, flexibility.