In the market, one can find many PVC keychains featuring city landscapes. Those with landscape pictures are mostly in a variety of colors, bright and mainly have gradients and other color variations. We usually complete them through printing. The main feature of printed products is that they can share a set of molds. Customers can produce various different products without having to make multiple sets of molds.
Printing mainly includes flat printing and screen printing.
1. Flat printing: Using C, M, Y, K four-color dots for printing. By combining the four basic colors CMYK in dense dots to form a gradient-printed color.
2. Sticker printing: This is the ordinary printing on paper as the carrier, then pasted on metal sheets, and must cover AP. Sticker printing is also flat printing, but it uses paper as the carrier. The advantage of this process is that it is suitable for making bitmap effects (photos) and gradient colors that cannot be achieved by color-injection processes. The disadvantage is that the color expression is not as good as the color-injection process.
3. Screen printing: Directly printing the ink on the metal surface, not necessarily covering AP. The advantage of this product is that the color is more rich and intense compared to flat printing. It is a monochrome, solid-color printing. The disadvantage is that it cannot achieve gradient effects.
4. Transfer printing: Used for non-planar screen printing. It is printing on three-dimensional or curved surfaces. Generally, screen printing that cannot touch the printing surface is suitable for transfer printing.
The advantage is that this process can achieve effects that other techniques cannot, even on surfaces with undulating variations.
The disadvantage is that the color is prone to fading, the production process is slightly more difficult, the output is not high, and the price is relatively expensive.