Patent ID: 7658146

Claim:
A pad printing system, comprising: a pad printing machine comprising at least one pad printing unit to apply a print to an object in at least one print station; an object positioning device at said at least one print station, the object positioning device comprising an object support to hold the object to be printed in a plurality of different print positions in said print station, wherein the object positioning device is a multi-positioning device by means of which the object support jointly with an object to be printed are positionable automatically and sequentially in each of at least two of said different print positions in the same print station in order to print the object at said at least two corresponding print positions; and the pad printing machine is adapted to print on the object at the same print station sequentially at the at least two different print positions in particular areas of the object to be printed; and a numerical program control unit for controlling operations of the pad printing machine and of the object positioning device, said operations of the pad printing machine and of the object positioning device being matched to each other by the program control unit; wherein the object positioning device further comprises two compound slide units each including a longitudinal slide and a transverse slide; the longitudinal slides are displaceable relative to each other and along a longitudinal coordinate axis and are guided in longitudinal guides; each transverse slide is displaceable along a transverse coordinate axis and is guided in a transverse guide present at a respective one of the longitudinal slides; the transverse slides are displaceable relative to each other; the transverse coordinate axis runs transversely to the longitudinal coordinate axis; the object support has two opposite ends each being mounted on and connected by an articulation to a respective one of the transverse slides, said articulation allowing relative rotational motion between the respective end of the object support and the respective transverse slide; the object support is displaceable and positionable along the longitudinal coordinate axis by means of simultaneous and identical displacement of the two longitudinal slides; the object support is displaceable and positionable along the transverse coordinate axis by means of simultaneous and identical displacements of the two transverse slides; and the object support is rotatable and positionable transversely to both the longitudinal and transverse coordinate axes by displacement of at least one of the transverse slides relative to the other transverse slide along the transverse coordinate axis, and by simultaneous displacement of at least one of the longitudinal slides relative to the other longitudinal slide along the longitudinal coordinate axis, all said displacements being driven by the numerical program control unit.