Introduction to curved thermal transfer films

1 Introduction to curved thermal transfer films
Curved thermal transfer films are a type of thermal transfer films, which are mainly designed for substrates with curved shapes (including arcs, ellipses, cylinders, and cones).

Lampshade curved thermal transfer films

The continuous development of thermal transfer technology and the emergence of these curved thermal transfer films have made up for the limitation that other traditional printing processes can only print flat substrates, greatly expanded the printable range, and made most of the substrates beautify their appearance, further improving the added value of the products.

2 Design principle of curved thermal transfer film
The main design principle of curved thermal transfer film is to design the artwork according to the unfolded area after unfolding the shape of the curved surface (including arc, ellipse, cylinder, cone). When calculating the unfolded area, the "shrinkage" of the substrate and the "stretching" value of the curved thermal transfer film should also be calculated. Only in this way can the true printing area of the substrate be accurately calculated, and the precise thermal transfer pattern can be designed to avoid the pattern being too large or too small due to incomplete calculation, thereby affecting the appearance of the substrate.

3 Curved thermal transfer film pattern design
At the same time, for substrates with patterns such as ellipses, cylinders and cones connected end to end, when designing these curved thermal transfer film patterns, the pattern connection problem should also be considered, and the patterns of the head and tail parts should be virtualized, so that the head and tail patterns will not appear inconsistent when combined due to overlap.

All of these require experience accumulation to design accurate curved thermal transfer films.