One of the most commonly used materials for branding is acrylic. It is used for different products from gift and food packaging to signage, business cards, stands, awards, wall frames, and décor.
Acrylic is very similar to glass, but it is durable, has an excellent display quality, and can be cleaned easily. Purchasing or making an acrylic product is beautiful enough, but we cannot argue that prints make everything better. Because after you decide to brand your business with acrylic products, a thousand other companies are doing the same. This requires you to go a step further; printing on acrylic products: images, logo, and other custom acrylic signs. Paper and ink are the two most commonly used items in printing.
Acrylic is also used to print pictures in 3-D custom shapes and sizes.
This post will acquaint you with possible printing methods on acrylic products.
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Acrylic Painting Techniques
Direct Printing
Direct printing is a printing process that involves printing directly on the surface of the acrylic sheet with a machine.
Face Mounting
It is one of the most popular ways of printing on an acrylic surface or any material. Facemounts produce the best color quality.
Types of Acrylic Printing
There are two significant ways of printing on an acrylic surface
Screen Printing
Just as the name suggests, screen printing is the process of transferring ink or color through a mesh. It is a straightforward process. Ink is transferred to the acrylic sheet’s surface and coated with ink using a squeegee.
It is the most common way to print on acrylic products. Screen printing is the oldest print method dating back to the 18th century. It is a very sophisticated process of printing an image onto a surface. Screen printing is sometimes known as silkscreen printing. There are two main techniques used in screen printing.
Manual Screen Printing
This is the first screen printing process to be discovered. The method of printing manually on a surface is called serigraphy.
It involves using a mesh bordered by wood to transfer an image or logo onto the surface of an acrylic item. The process of manual screen printing is as follows
- Hold your acrylic sheet down firmly on your work surface. This is to prevent it from shifting around during the process to get a steady image.
- with the print side facing down, place the laser print at the center of the acrylic sheet
- using tape, hold down the pattern onto the sheet
- Apply ink onto the mesh, and with a squeegee, spread the ink around till
- Manual screen printing is time-consuming. Silkscreen printing produces one color at a time. When the image is printed in multiple colors, it involves a color separation process, which is expensive. Manual screen printing produces the exact true colors required for your product.
Digital/Automatic Screen printing on acrylic
If you have just a couple of acrylic items to be printed on, manual Printing on Acrylic might work. Imagine printing on thousands of objects; screen printing just had to be automated. You would probably think this technique might be more expensive, and it is cheaper because it requires fewer materials than manual screen printing, saving time and resources. It requires just images and acrylics. Digital screen printing involves using a machine to print directly on an acrylic sheet. This printing method can print more than one custom image at once.
Digital Printing/UV printing
Ultraviolet printing is a form of digital printing that creates images directly on acrylic sheets. UV printing uses UV light to dry ink as it is printed, hence the name UV printing. It requires the use of a particular ink called UV ink. Digital printing allows for printing on acrylic sheets up to 2 inches thick.
This print method does not print on acrylic sheets alone, and it is used to print on paper, glass. UV printing allows you to play around with images; two signs, images, or logos can be printed at once.
The image to be printed is sent to the computer and then printed on acrylic sheets with a UV printer. UV printing gives various finishing options, like a gloss finish or matte finish. The use of good quality UV ink that will not turn yellow on exposure to direct sunlight is suggested for the best results. UV printing produces custom precision-cut acrylic products, and the image printed with the UV printing method is more pronounced and vibrant.
Stickers
Are you looking to save money with acrylic printing? Then stickers are the best choice. It is also used for complex logos, artworks, or logos with gradient colors. Stickers acrylic print is an example of face mounting; the image or logo is first printed on paper and then transferred to the acrylic surface in a process known as face mounting. Stickers are printed on high-quality photo paper.
Foil Stamping
Foil stamping is transferring pigmented foil onto a surface, in this case, an acrylic sheet. Book covers of the middle ages inspired this print method. This acrylic print method is more expensive and, therefore, relatively less used for acrylic prints. Luxury brands use this printing method for their business. The foil can be in traditional metal colors like silver, gold, or other colors like green, red, and blue. This method is used to print on acrylic business cards, wedding invitations and book covers.
If your aim is for your finished product to stand out in the market, acrylic foil printing is one of the best methods of printing you can use. There are three techniques in foil printing or stamping.
Hot Foiling
This involves a hot die used as a foil machine to stamp it into the card. The metal die is heated up and pressed into the surface of the acrylic sheet under high pressure. A metal stamping plate needs to be manufactured for each design. This means if you need to print more than one image on an acrylic sheet employee, there is a setup charge for each image to be printed.
With this technique, you can see the rough contours of the paper, so the light does not reflect as much as the other methods below. This also means that the foiled areas can be inconsistent, sometimes it can look patchy when the color doesn’t get into the grooves in the paper.
Cold Foiling
A cold foiling printing strategy was invented to take out the requirement for the exorbitant metal stamp-making process. It is in this way somewhat quicker and less expensive because it doesn’t need the plates to be made for each plan.
All things being equal, this interaction sticks the foil onto a card or paper. This also deals with more slender materials since it doesn’t embellish the surface region. It is now and then professed to be all the more harmless to the ecosystem because there is no hotness and no compelling reason to produce plates for each plan. Notwithstanding, it utilizes comparable materials with the expansion of paste.
Digital Foiling
Digital foiling is applying a hot stamping foil to an ink. Unlike traditional foiling methods, it doesn’t require plates or a die. The acrylic sheet or paper is fed into the machine, and the machine rolls he designed to be foiled onto the printing surface. In comparison to manual hot foiling, digital foiling can create finer print details and it allows you to print on already printed surface.
Metal Stickers
Metal stickers are just like paper stickers but manufactured from metals. They give a metallic shimmer to prints and images. Quality metal stickers must be abrasion-free, chemical resistant and must glue permanently to acrylic print surface.
Metal stickers are usually used for moving and tracking assets because of the special readable barcode on them.
Advantages of printing on acrylic
Printing on acrylic is durable. Prints on acrylic can last for years. This is because acrylic is more wear-resistant in comparison to glass or wood.
Acrylic printing produces vibrant, high-quality images. The final result of acrylic prints have black nuances like no other material giving the images a 3-D definition.
Some acrylic prints are scratch-resistant. The UV ink used possesses chemical and scratch-resistant properties that make the images, art, and design printed.
Acrylic prints are moisture and UV protected. Printing on acrylic is water-proof.
Acrylic print is now used by photographers to produce images that can be hanged on the wall or framed.
In Conclusion, there are different ways to print on acrylic products. Unsure about which printing method is suitable for you? Contact us at AP acrylic to provide you with the most appropriate solution for your brand for more information.
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