Problem with Pad Printing, Ink don't stick on the pad, please help

Looks like the ink is dried in the plate.

Pad printing is not an easy thing to learn, much tougher learning curve than screenprinting. It's all about managing the flashing off of the thinners from the ink in extreme precision. Once the inkcup slides back the ink's thinners flash off quite quickly, this makes the image's top layer tacky and allows it to stick to and transfer to the pad. Once on the pad the bottom layer of the image tacks-off and becomes sticky allowing it to stick to the part you are printing.

Too much tack-off time and it won't pick-up or drop the image properly, not enough and you'll get a wet-smeary mess. You manage all of this with the speed of all the machine strokes, also with varied thinner speeds or "hotness" which is how fast it evaporates from the ink. There are also retarders available, and any padprinter worth his/her salt has a pad-puffer or hair-dryer by the press to use to speed things up when needed.

The one thing pad-printing often needs is consistency of printing speed, for the most part they don't like to be started and stopped, get it up and running and printing properly, then print steadily at the same pace. Some inks/thinners/prints are more forgiving than others, but a fussy print may require extreme finesse in timing. of course the secre touch in all of this is to be able to get it printing correctly and then keep going through the run without producing a pile of rejects, which is exactly what you'll often do when you're getting started.

The two things I will suggest. Work for an experience printer to learn the trade, doing it yourself is an exercise in frustration, and will lead to failure more often than not. Also I can't tell for sure what type of machine you are running, but if it's not pneumatic or electric, sell it and look for a good used automatic machine. There are just wayyyyyyy too many variables you'll need to precisely control to be successful to add in hand-cranking to the equation. Besides you'll need both hands free to really operate the machine and load/unload parts.

Those hand-crank machines are useless and make the process harder to learn, exactly what a beginner doesn't need. Not to mention they are in most cases many times more expensive than a good used machine. She only people that make money with the hand-crankers are the shysters selling them. There is a very good reason why there are so many of them for sale used, that's because they take near magic to make work, and anybody that does have the know-how to actually achieve good prints and profit from one would move on to a pneumatic machine anyways. Automatic machines take years and years to master, hand crankers are even tougher to learn and I pity anyone who tries.

wow Inkworks.. thank you for the detailed explanation.. at the shows the sales reps make it seem so easy.. but your comments highlight the skill level needed to succeed, not to mention the machines you actually should be using.... very similar in my world... scan and sew.. lol

if you touch the ink on the plate is it still fresh, try cleaning the pad with alcohol also. Did your equipment come with a manual, usually you can trouble shoot any problem you might have.

Hope this helps.

Henry Z

please tell me more thanks