: Is it possible to print on small poly bags? We run a restaurant and we package our product in 3x2x8 2mil poly bags. For 4 years we've printed labels and stuck them on the bags, but I'd
We run a restaurant and we package our product in 3x2x8 2mil poly bags. For 4 years we've printed labels and stuck them on the bags, but I'd like to see if there's a way to print the information straight onto the bags.
Are there companies that do this? We order the bags from Uline, so if they wanted to get the bags straight from them, and resell it to us with the printing done on them, that would be fine.
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Normally, plastic bags (specially for food) are printed before they are actually bags.
The roll of plastic is printed for example on flexography, and the roll of plastic (sometimes called a sleeve) is converted into a bag. You can add optical markers on the print, so the next machine understand where the cutting and sealing must be.
The ammount of minimum bags is considerable, because you could be charged for X ammount of kilos or rolls of plastic printed, regardless the size of the bag.
As this is a small bag, you have much more than if you have larger ones. Probably tenths of thousands.
Silk print could be used. But I do not think it is a good idea. It is a manual process, and the plastic is not the most noble substrate, because it could stick to the screen. Probably some small information at one color only.
And as mentioned, this method could be not safe to insert food on the bags.
Some inks for plastic are solvent based, that dry by evaporation or oxidation, which means they can smell and have some slight toxic vapors.
And some other inks (solvents) could react to the plastic, or penetrate it.
Stickers are not a bad idea at all. You could think of printing on a transparent substrate perhaphs.
It looks like it wouldn't be too difficult to screen print on this type of bag. The trickiest part of printing on these would be the ink. Typically, screen printed inks are cured by passing the product through a heat tunnel, ensuring that the ink reaches ~300 ° F. These bags look like something that would shrivel up or melt at those temperatures. It's likely that an ink that can air dry would be needed.
You could try bringing a couple of the bags to a local screen printer and ask if it's something they could print on. As long as they lay completely flat, I don't think it would be difficult.
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