According to a study, 48% of people in the world are smartphone users. That’s almost half of the globe, and it’s no doubt that promotional phone cases can be a lucrative business venture because of that fact. Also, add the fact that many people love personalized stuff to feel special, and you have yourself a great print-on-demand business idea.
But, to stand out from the competition, you need to know how to print a design on a phone case properly. Well, the post you are about to read will detail all the different ways on how to print promotional phone cases on-demand!
The Most Popular Techniques For Printing Promotional Phone Cases
To sum it up, here is a list of the three most popular promotional phone case printing techniques:
Before we start, we have also prepared a table that summarizes the main characteristics of each individual printing technique!
Now, let’s break down all the ways of how to print promotional phone cases on-demand!
Screen Printing Promotional Phone Cases
This printing method is as traditional as it gets, as it was utilized even 1,000 years ago. As it can be utilized on different materials, it’s no wonder that screen printing is around and kicking for so long.
In a nutshell, screen printing is vastly different from most other printing techniques. It uses a polyester screen or mesh placed very tight on a frame that will serve as a promotional phone case. Then, layers of ink are applied to the frame, either by pressing, rolling, or squeegeeing the ink over the screen.
The main downside of screen printing is the longevity of the process. Each color will require a different screen, and you will also need to wait for the ink to dry off. So, if you use more colors, the screen printing process will take longer.
Even though it takes longer to print individual colors, screen printing will provide vibrant and high-quality colors. Just keep in mind that these colors will scratch more easily over time.
Still, if you are printing with only one color, you can enjoy a cheap method of printing a higher number of custom phone cases.
Screen printing can be utilized on a variety of phone case materials, such as:
- TPU soft rubber
- Wood
- Metal
- Hard plastic
UV Printing Promotional Phone Cases
UV printing is an efficient method of printing custom phone cases that happens to be 100% environment-friendly. It uses UV light to dry and cure the ink when applied to a phone case.
One great feature of the UV printing technique is that the ink will get cured instantly, resulting in much finer details on your promotional phone cases. Also, as the ink dries extra fast, the production time is much faster too.
The UV prints will also have much better durability than screen prints, with higher wear and tear durability. Still, UV-printed graphics are known to fade over time, which is a major disadvantage.
When it comes to color quality, UV-printed graphics sit on top of your custom phone cases instead of being absorbed. This results in a much sharper image altogether.
UV printing is a very popular phone case printing technique because it supports almost any type of material you throw at it!
Overall, UV printing is the most cost-effective printing technique for custom promotional phone cases.
IMD Printing Promotional Phone Cases
Now, here is one extra effective method of how to print promotional phone cases on-demand. In-mould design is a printing technique in which your custom phone cases are embellished during the injection moulding cycle.
That means that the design will be applied to your phone cases while being created via injection moulding procedure. Essentially, your design is put into the open plastic injection and held in place via various means.
IMD printing technique provides some visible advantages to other mentioned printing techniques. First of all, your design will be completely permanent, which means it will be impossible to remove or scratch off, which provides high durability. As IMD printing removes post-mould decoration processes, it can be a more cost-effective option for printing services.
IMD printing is usually done on hard plastic and flexible TPU phone cases.
Keep in mind that the IMD printing technique is best suited for large quantities of phone cases. You see, the unofficial minimal number of phone cases per design is 250 with the IMD print method. So, if you’re not dealing with larger quantities of phone cases, maybe you’re better off with other promotional phone case printing methods.
We hope that you learned how to print promotional cases on-demand. There are other ways other than the three we mentioned, but these are the most popular nowadays. Now, the next step in your journey is to choose a suitable printing technique and print your custom phone case.
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