Buying a new car, we all want its levers and buttons to be soft and pleasant to touch, we enjoy those little pictures printed on them. But have you ever thought how these pictures appear there?
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All component parts are sent in separate packs in order not to damage them.
This is a printing press, it was made in Switzerland and it’s 15 to 20 years old!
An adjustment table.
Working tools – a knife, palette knife, paint, tampon…
Printing is made with these tampons.
They’re soft but elastic.
They are made of silicone.
An etching.
All lines must be perfectly straight.
Each etching is for each print.
First of all, let’s take some paint (30 g).
Then add some epoxide (so the driver doesn’t scratch the print off).
It’s on the bottom of the plastic glass.
Installing an etching. Those black circles are magnets.
We are ready to start.
Here we go.
The palette knife and paint.
Moving, the knife shovels all the paint back into its tub.
Almost all the paint…
When the paint is printed on the tampon…
The tampon slaps the lever twice.
That’s what we have in the result!
Four hours later, we put the levers into the drier and keep them there for about an hour and a half (+100C will be enough).
By the way, we have just made levers for an Audi.
The tampon HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I’m familier with silk screening, this looks like it is taken one step further, thanks E.R., very interesting post.
Maybe if they used RED paint …
In lot of non english speaking countries the pad is called tampon. it’s not a step further from screenprinting- its a diferent method of printing, used for large quantitys, and curved surfaces.
I was refering to the fact that the tampon itself was silk screened, awaiting transfer to the workpiece, therefore it is indeed one step more. The word tampon is commonly used in the States to describe the applicatior used in the French Polishing technique of furniture surfaces.