Thermal transfer plate making cost and process

Thermal transfer plate making cost and process

1 Thermal transfer plate making cost
In daily life, some companies that produce gifts and giveaways often complain that the thermal transfer plate fee is too expensive when their products need thermal transfer. With such a small number of orders, the plate fee is even higher than the cost of the bare parts of the product. . . . . . .

In fact, this is inseparable from the cost structure of thermal transfer plate making. A set of gravure plates with precise production, excellent pattern reproduction performance, and long-lasting printing has a cumbersome production process, which is really astonishing.

Thermal transfer plate making picture

2 Why is it necessary to charge thermal transfer plate making fees?
First, the thermal transfer printing film manufacturer needs to determine how many plate rollers are needed for this set of plates based on the AI, CDR, and PS layered drawings provided by the customer, and then perform thermal transfer layout according to the specifications and dimensions of the product, and then send it to the plate making factory for pre-plate making preparations. After proper preparation, a series of plate making work will begin.

1. Major processes in the thermal transfer platemaking process
According to the major processes in the thermal transfer platemaking process, it can be divided into:

Machine processing → nickel plating → copper plating → grinding → copper polishing → electric carving → chrome plating → proofing → inspection → storage → plate issuance, these 11 processes;

2. Minor processes in the thermal transfer platemaking process
If divided according to the minor processes in the thermal transfer platemaking process, there are as many as dozens of processes.

For example, one of the machining items includes:

Booting, plugging, rough turning 1, rough turning 2, grinding, electric welding, dynamic balancing, carbon dioxide, inspection, fine turning 1, fine turning 2, sawing, coiling, submerged arc welding, grinder 1, grinder 2, planing key, flat end, boring, unloading, bending, pre-bending and more than 20 minor processes.

Any problem in any small link may affect the quality of this set of printing plates, and then affect the quality of the thermal transfer printing film.

So in order to ensure the quality of the printing plate, each plate roller must go through such a long and tedious process. The above process basically determines the composition of the cost of high-quality thermal transfer platemaking.

3 Analysis of thermal transfer platemaking cost
Therefore, the editor believes that if the number of products is small, not only the cost of thermal transfer platemaking is not low, but also the other costs of the entire thermal transfer process are not low. The thermal transfer cost of a single product is high, and the thermal transfer process is not recommended.

However, if the number of products is large, when calculating the thermal transfer cost of a single product, it will be found that the cost of using the thermal transfer process is actually quite low.

It can be seen that the real factor for whether the cost of thermal transfer platemaking is high or not depends on the number of thermal transfer products.