Ink Mixing Guide for Pad Printing

Before mixing Ink, it is important to know about the types of ink involved with pad printing: TPU ink and TPR ink. TPU ink is a two part ink, meaning you have to add thinner and hardener to the ink. TPR is one part and many times needs only thinner. Before we start mixing, pour ink thinner to the empty squirt bottle that came with the supply package and label the bottle.

Mixing Ink

1. Place a paper cup on the electronic scale and “tare” to get zero on the reading.
2. You can mix any amount of ink you need (25 or 35 gram) but let’s try 25 grams for our trial mixing.
3. Pour 25 grams of TPR or TPU ink in the cup. The reading should be “25.00 g”.
4. Add 3 grams (15% of 20 grams) of thinner in the cup. 15% of thinner is a good starting point. If you feel that ink is still too thick after adding 15%, you can slowly add more but not to exceed 25%. The reading should be “28.00 g”.
5. If you are using in the manual machine or if the substrate you are printing on is hard to stick to - Add 2.8 grams (10% of 28 grams) of hardener in the cup. 10% of Hardener is a good starting point. If you feel that ink needs to bite more on to the substrate then slowly add more but not to exceed 20%
6. Mix the ink well. The ink should now be ready to be poured on to the tray (for Manual Pad Printers) or poured into the sealed cup (for automatic Pad Printers).