Materials Components Finishes & Marking    

Silkscreening

For completing your fully finished, professional enclosure, you have two options for applying graphics for labelling, branding and decoration: direct digital printing and silkscreening. Each process offers its own benefits and advantages.

Our silkscreening process utilizes the latest in screen-preparation technology, as well as durable epoxy based inks, to ensure a high resolution and quality finish. Protocase stocks a variety of standard silkscreen ink colors, and can provide custom colors upon request.

See our technical papers on silkscreening

Silkscreening, also known as screen-printing or serigraphy, is a printing technique that involves passing ink through a porous fabric, thus creating a sharp-edged single-color image created from a stencil.

• Tell Me About Silkscreening
• Contrast between silkscreen and powder coat colors ~ PDF

You may silkscreen graphics onto enclosures, parts and panels that either have bare-metal finish or powdercoat finish.

The clarity of silkscreen can be greatly affected by the texture of powdercoat used. Generally, for best results, it is recommended you choose a smooth powdercoat finish. Silkscreen will work on various textures and colors but each situation is unique. This may require modifications to your silkscreen such as changing of fonts and thickening of fine lines. For more information, please contact tech support at info@protocase.com.

Image files must be provided electronically. Faxed images will not provide sharp enough resolution for our process to replicate. If text-only screening is required, simply provide information such as font type, font size and font color when you submit your order. Our graphics team will be happy to produce the required text-only screens.

Stocked Silkscreening colors

Below are the stocked silkscreen colors we have. Protocase can provide custom silkscreen colors upon request. Note: The color representations below may deviate from the actual color due to variations in browser software, video cards, and monitors

High Intensity White	Lemon Yellow, Epoxy Ink	Pantone 123C Medium Yellow Epoxy Ink	Pantone 142C, Epoxy Ink	Pantone 6C Cool Gray, Epoxy Ink
Brilliant Orange, Epoxy Ink	Fire Red, Epoxy Ink	Pantone 201C, Epoxy Ink	Pantone 649C, Epoxy Ink	Pantone Process BlueC, Epoxy Ink
Pantone 355C, Epoxy Ink	Pantone 2623C (Purple), Epoxy Ink	Opaque Black, Epoxy Ink	Pantone Cool Gray 10C, Epoxy Ink	Proto-Reflex Blue, Epoxy Ink
Pantone 3285C, Epoxy Ink

Cleaning Your Enclosures & Parts

We recommend any part or enclosure with digital print or silkscreen be cleaned using a mild soap/degreaser (for example: dish detergent), or water with a soft (non-abrasive) cloth or sponge.

Avoid using isopropyl alcohol, lysol wipes, acetone or hand sanitizer. For cloths, we do not recommend paper towel, as it is abrasive.

Tolerances

As with everything in the manufacturing process, there are always some variance between parts and images (spatial registration). We use an X,Y and angular micro-adjust, which allows for a respectable tolerance of 0.020" | 0.51mm, which is more than adequate for most applications.

However, there are certain situations that are much more sensitive to disparation. Please see diagrams below for examples.

Figure 1 - Eccentric Circles: Left 0.020" (0.50mm) eccentricity x & y, middle 0.002" (0.05mm) x & y Right 0.010" (0.25mm) eccentricity x & y

Please note: Images are a scaled representation of a CAD drawing of half-inch circles around quarter inch holes

We strive for excellence with the goal of reducing Foreign Object Debris (FOD) and achieving consistency with all silkscreening. However, due to some constraints of our facility, there may be minor blemishes on parts. These blemishes are not distinguishable or seen from an arm’s length away.