Printing on boxes

[Emma A]

Anyone have experience with printing on boxes?

[Spencer 411]

Anyone have experience with printing on boxes?

I have not yet printed on cardboard boxes, but it should be pretty easy. You might need a vacuum pallet or a light tack to keep the boxes down. If the boxes stick to the ink/stencil then they might not look crisp when you pull it away from the screen. A vacuum pallet is the best bet, but can be expensive. Using a pallet adhesive would work, but make sure that you "de-tack" it a bit so its not too sticky. If its too sticky then cardboard might stick to your pallet resulting in layers of the cardboard being torn off and left stuck to the pallet.

Oh and you may want to use a water based ink made for paper. Plastisol would probably work too, but I am not sure about curing plastisol ink on paper. A water based ink is probably the way to go for boxes.

[Chuggins]

Hi Emma!

I have printed on thousands of boxes before and its actually pretty simple. You can use a light tack to help keep the boxes in place, use a 156 or 200 mesh screen with Pitch Black. That's it. Oh, you may or may not need to modify a platen to fit all your boxes. I ended up using different size platens based on my boxes. Just like youth platens for youth shirts.

Once printed, set the box off to the side and either use a hair dryer/heat gun to evaporate the ink or run it quickly through a dryer (if it fits) to evaporate. The ink will soak into the cardboard and actually become pretty durable.

Your biggest headache will be finding space to stack the printed boxes!