Thermoformed polymer printing

The Photopolymer Plate of over 85° Shore D hardness can stand temperatures over 160°C, and it could be successfully used as a master plate for making thermoformed matrix of phenol group resin to be used for thermoformed polymer printing plates such as rubber plates and the like under conditions of 30 kg/cm2 pressure... 

Vinyl chloride has been known for over a hundred years and its polymerization to polyvinyl chloride (PVC) was achieved in 1912. Industrial-scale production of this plastic began in 1927. PVC is still the most versatile plastic. One of the reasons for this is the numerous variations made possible by the method of manufacture of the polymer, namely by copolymerization with other monomers and their processing. Thus, PVC can be thermoformed on all conventional processing machines if the slight thermal damage is taken into consideration. Machining is easy and the material can be bonded, bent, welded, printed and thermoformed. 

Colour can be obtained by adding colorants to compounds, or encapsulating the part with a continuous film of another coloured or printed polymer in mould decoration (IMD), painting, multilayer sheets for thermoforming. .. 

Distortion-printed products have been used since World War II (41). Until recently, the standard technique involved thermoforming a polymer sheet to the desired shape, painting the desired design on the shape, and then reheating the shape to a flat sheet. This has been largely replaced with finite element computer programs that carry out the entire process electronically. 

In-mold decoration is commonly used in the automotive sector to achieve special effects (wood grain, brushed metal look, etc.) on interiors and exteriors. The dominant incumbent is laminated film in which the decorative effects are back printed behind the surface layer. Typically, these films are thermoformed off-line and placed in an injection or compression mold that is subsequently filled with molten substrate polymer. 

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