Keyboard new printing technology sharing

In recent years, with the development of keyboard manufacturing technology, some new printing technologies have emerged. The three types we will describe below are representative of a new generation of keyboard printing technology. Their common feature is that they are dedicated to solving the problem of balance between the firmness and aesthetics of keyboard printing. But the price paid is that compared to the three traditional printing methods, the processes of the three new printing technologies are more complex and costly.

Laser Filling Technology

This type of technically printed keyboard has now begun to see some in the market, especially in black keyboards traditionally not suitable for laser printing. Its principle is a bit like "tattooing."

Tattooing is the use of needles to make fine lines on the skin, and then paint it with pigments so that the color will penetrate the lines of the skin and will not be washed or rubbed off afterwards. The same is true for laser filling technology.

Keyboards made with laser packing technology are first printed with laser printing and printing (but printed lighter than normal laser printing to keep the surface flat), and then used for secondary printing using a mimeograph, so that the cured ink will be The nicks left by the laser light penetrate into it and remain in it. After that, they will not be easily worn off.

The keyboard printed by the laser packing technology has been made up of the secondary printing of the ink, so it has made up for the disadvantages of poor laser printing type and the inability to print color, and because of the laser nicks as a basis, its firmness is much higher than that of the keyboard. Simple ink printing.

The second printing, whether it is the use of screen or pad printing, does not necessarily have a straight rule. However, in terms of the characteristics of the laser packing method, pad printing seems to be more in line with the characteristics of the desired ink (although all inks are printed, the characteristics of the ink used in the screen and pad printing are different. Screen printing uses a belt. There is a high-permeability UV ink with a quick-drying UV-light coating, while pad printing uses a special-printing ink with a hardener.

Sublimation printing

The keyboard using the sublimation printing method is only one brand of RealForce we introduced shortly.

Sublimation printing is a printing method that is very different from ordinary ink printing. Instead of the usual liquid-like pigment inks, solid-state resin inks are used. This ink will sublimate into a gaseous state at high temperatures, and will decompose after infiltrating the surface of the permeable printing material in the molecular state of gas. Thus, it becomes a whole with the printing surface on the physical level, not merely "sticking" on the printing surface like ordinary pigment ink. So its printing is very strong. Moreover, resin inks are superior in gloss, morphology and other aspects. The most common sublimation printing service is the service of ceramic cup “baking” photos.

When sublimation printing is used for keyboard printing, the ink will completely “penetrate” into the ABS plastic inner layer of the button, so it is almost impossible to be worn off, and the text of the sublimation printing has a three-dimensional sense and glossiness. However, the process of sublimation printing is much more complicated than ordinary pigment ink printing. So in addition to high prices, just for the RealForce keyboard, regardless of cost, it seems that you haven't heard how people use this type of printing.

Hollow text

This type of printing has so far only been used by Apple Computer on its laptop keyboard. But in fact, this kind of printing method is not rare, because there are few users on the computer keyboard, but another kind of keyboard - the keyboard of the mobile phone is printed almost all in this way.

It is very simple to say, this kind of printing method is to use the transparent material to make the key, then cover the key surface with the opaque paint, hollow on the surface according to the appearance of the letter as "yin". If the paint is applied to the inside of the keys without touching the fingers, the text will naturally become worn.

In fact, Apple's use of this printing method does not seem to be the main purpose of writing strong, or because of the appearance of the first. Because this type of emptied font is "inscribed", it is clearer and brighter than mimeographed. And like a mobile phone keyboard, the backlight circuit can be installed under the keys of the hollow text, so that the notebook keyboard has an excellent backlight effect like a mobile phone keyboard.

However, the shortcomings of the hollow text method are also obvious. When this transparent material is used to manufacture a keyboard, its elasticity, hardness, and wear resistance are inherently inferior to ordinary keycap materials. In fact, no matter whether it is printed with hollow characters or not, the material of transparent key caps has not so far been a traditional black-and-white ABS plastic. There is no way to do this.