On-enclosure Printing - UV / DTS / Pad, etc? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: forrestc
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 17, 2025, 11:05:32 pm
content: Currently, we print and apply labels to some of our products in-house. One of the projects for this year is to transition to direct printing on the enclosures to eliminate the need for stickers. We believe this will enhance the appearance of the products and prevent the labeling nightmare.I bought a used pad printer a couple of years ago, but I haven't gotten around to making it work yet, as it needs some repairs to get it up and running. I'm ok with going that route, but I'd rather just use a digital direct-to-enclosure (UV) printer. Unfortunately, every time I look into them, I hear horror stories about how they tend to self-destruct over minor issues, such as not printing for a week or two. Or clogs, or so on.I'm wondering if anyone here prints legends, logos, or other designs directly on their enclosures, and if so, what they're using and their experiences with it, positive or negative.

author: mikeselectricstuff
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 17, 2025, 11:31:43 pm
content: May be worth looking at the new Eufymake UV printer - claims to have overcome a lot of the issues of UV printing. plenty of reviews on YTPrintable thickness may limit use for printing on "things" though

author: forrestc
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 17, 2025, 11:49:48 pm
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on June 17, 2025, 11:31:43 pmI'm looking at this and it sure seems interesting. But the fact that the max "Z Axis" height isn't specified is bothersome. When I've looked at others, I've found that a lot of the printers out there seem to be set up for printing on coasters or phone cases or other thin-ish objects, and not a 4.5" tall (printing on side) enclosure.

author: loki42
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2025, 01:02:11 am
content: What are you printing on and do you need specific colours? We've tried screen printing, uv printing and fiber laser and if you can do it with fiber laser do it. It's so fast, no cleaning, just works every time and you don't have to worry about adhesion.

author: abeyer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2025, 02:44:38 am
content: Quote from: mikeselectricstuff on June 17, 2025, 11:31:43 pmI'm dubious of those claims when they're building the price of a printhead replacement into the 1 year warranty... Makes me think it's not much more reliable, just cheaper.

author: WattsThat
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2025, 03:10:34 am
content: Without details, it’s difficult to suggest an appropriate solution as I don’t think there is a good one size fits all answer. I’ve done many screen printed enclosures and rack mount enclosure faceplates.Screen printing is very cost effective and fast when you have higher quantities. Number of colors and surfaces can increase the number of screens required and the overall size of the screen(s) factor into the total cost to amortize.Also, depending upon the surface, CNC engraving and paint fill are another option.It all depends…

author: forrestc
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 18, 2025, 08:01:30 am
content: Quote from: loki42 on June 18, 2025, 01:02:11 amToday, these are off-the-shelf plastic enclosures (I think ABS, but it might be another substrate). We have a reasonably high mix (i.e., several products using the same enclosure, with some higher volumes than others), so we cut holes in the enclosures ourselves and label them in-house. For some upcoming projects we might move to a metal enclosure for certain products.We've had enclosure suppliers print for us, but that really bites us in the rear as products evolve - I've had to discard a lot of enclosures because they had the wrong printing for current products. Moving to the in-house labeling and hole cutting pretty much cured that as we cut and label for our upcoming production. So we really want to do the printing in-house.Today, we're printing in black and white with a laser onto high-quality "permanent identification" labels, and then using a vinyl cutter to cut out the design and hand-applying them. I've been doing that for probably 20 years now, and I really need to quit, as they no longer produce the professional-looking products I want. Single color is fine, but if I get pretty full color as a bonus, that's a plus.My plan was to move to a pad printer with plates engraved in-house (with our YAG fiber laser). Single color, white ink. But that (like screen printing) is going to involve all the fun of setup, teardown, cleaning, ink, and the mess, and well... You get the idea. So far, it's the most reasonable plan, but I really hate dealing with that type of stuff.Because these are plastic enclosures, laser isn't really an option.A digital "direct to print" option seems the best in terms of flexibility and ease of use, but I just haven't found the right solution here. This is why I asked, as I just can't seem to find something that would fit here. (Although I just saw the Roland BD-8, which is intriguing, comments make it sound costly to run).In the past, all the UV printers seemed either very expensive (like $30,000 or more), or didn't have enough Z-axis space, or had known issues, such as white ink clogging if not used daily, or some other deal-killer.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2025, 08:39:52 am
content: Quote from: forrestc on June 18, 2025, 08:01:30 amYou can laser plastic enclosures. Test it before making a decision on that. The best way of doing ti is to print a matrix of test marks with different intensity and speed of the laser (like test a 100 different setting on the enclosure). You can even laser different colors to some enclosures. And there are additives for ABS for example specifically made for laser marking.

author: loki42
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 18, 2025, 03:04:06 pm
content: I've got a Trumpf trumark fiber laser which has a thing called the navigator where it creates a grid of all the different settings for all the different types of marking it can do. There's a few that work well on plastic, foaming and carbonisation, depending on if you want white marks or black marks. You can also engrave. They've got example videos on ABS, POM and many other plastics. The detail is ludicrous. You can print text that you basically can't see with the naked eye and then zoom in 20x under the microscope and the text still looks smooth and readable. It's very fast and designed for production work. The software is pretty annoying for one off tasks though. Typical German industrial software.

author: forrestc
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 18, 2025, 11:12:30 pm
content: Quote from: loki42 on June 18, 2025, 03:04:06 pmQuote from: tszaboo on June 18, 2025, 08:39:52 amOk, I guess it's time to fire up the laser and try some settings. I've just spent the last 15 minutes looking at various marking videos.I had always assumed you needed something exotic like "2 layer plastics" where you're removing a top colored layer to show the layer below it.

author: loki42
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 19, 2025, 01:03:25 am
content: It'll also depend on the frequency range your laser can do. UV lasers are especially good for plastic marking.