Over the past 6 months we've received many requests to print Lego products. It all started when we printed some Lego bricks (pictured below) for a Lego Expo. The name got out into the Lego custom community and since then we have printed a lot of lego products and figurines (minifigs).
Printed Lego bricks for the brick-a-laide convention
A common question is “Are they pad printed or digitally printed?” The majority of the die-hard collectors/customizers are adamant that their Lego parts need to be pad printed - just like the Lego factory. This is all well and good, but there are some costs associated with pad printing which will sometimes not make it practical for short runs.
Pad Printing
Pad printing will certainly give the best effect, it will look cleaner, the images will be much sharper and the colours will be more accurate. We can actually mix the colour exactly to what you require (we use the Pantone standard).
The process for pad printing is as follows - developing art for the product, separating the colours for that art, making films and plates, setting up the machine and mixing the ink. It will also be possible for you to get the printing to “wrap” partially around surfaces (think arms, legs and heads). Be assured with all the above the result will look as good as what is coming out of the Lego factory.
Inkjet Printing
Inkjet printing is a very cost effective method of printing, at Adelaide Industrial Printers we use 2 types of inkjet printers, depending on what base colour product we start with. We have one machine that is well suited to printing directly onto a white surface. In instances where we are printing onto a coloured product it is necessary for us to utilise our other machine that will lay a white coat down first.
With inkjet printing you have a choice of millions of colours, the down side will be they will not as rich as the pad printed component.
This type of printing is suited predominantly to flat products.
In general for large print runs our preference would be to utilise pad printing and for the short runs we would use inkjet.
That being said we look at each Lego print job individually as there are so many variables that need to be considered...
Custom Printed Star Wars Lego Figurine Heads
Custom Printed Lego Figurine