Personalised Pens – Latest News on Personalisation techniques

Personalised pens are one of the most cost-effective ways of promoting you business or organisation but to our distributors the process of personalising them is a bit of a black art. Here is a brief explantion of the various processes used to personalise pens.

• Screen printed personalised ball pens: This is the most popular method for producing stunning images on pens. The images produced are mainly line or vector format images but ocassionally people attempt to produces images in full colour. We prefer not to adopt this method for personalising pens in full photographic colour as we have developed much better systems for achieving this type of image. The screen printing process relies entirely on ink passing through a woven mesh and the areas not being printed use a photographic stencil to selectively block the ink.
• Tampo printed personalised ballpens: This is without doubt the most universal form of printing. It can be used to print straight barrel pens, curvy pens,  and pens with compound angles. It relies entirely on a silicone rubber pad picking the ink up out of an etched plate containing the image and transferring that image to the pen by contact with the rubber pad .
• Foil Blocked personalised ball pens. One of the oldest and craft based forms of printing. This process is ideal for producing images on objects with flat surfaces in glossy metallic colours or where you require a bright colour on a dark surface. It has limited appeal for promotional pens because pen barrels are rarely flat. The process relies on a heated die with the image embossed on the surface transferring the colour required from a foil under heat and pressure.
• Transfer printed personalised ballpens. This process is ideal for printing cylinderical barrels of pens in full photographic colour. It is a similar to foil blocking in that it relies on heat and pressure to transfer the image from a foil. There are two distinct differences however, the foil is printed and the pressure pad is heated silicone rubber.
• Engraved Personalised ball Pens: This method of personalisation relies on the surface of the pen being selectively removed to expose the base metal in a contrasting effect. It can be achieved through machine emgraving or alternatively by laser engraving.

So there we have it, personalised ball pens can be produced in a whole variety of ways and keep an eye on this news feed for more technical information from The Pen Warehouse – the home of promotional ball pens and printed ball pens.