Many companies see marketing a brand or product requires advertising balloons. A custom logo printed onto a balloon requires a specialised printer commercially available from one of only four companies worldwide. 

 

In December 2008, important occasions took a trip to Italy to visit Rifco a manufacturer of products for the Balloon industry. Rifco are renowned for latex balloon printing machines that they have been designing and modifying since 1979. Our aim was to view and to be trained on their new RS-00/SP model yet to be featured in their literature.

 

Based in a small town called Casalvieri, we travelled from East Midlands Airport to the Campion Airport just South of Rome. Public Transport takes us to the Termini Train station right in the heart of Rome where the Intercity train took us on a 90 minute journey to Cassino. Cassino is the nearest town to Casalvieri that public transport can get you to. The owner of Rifco collected us from the train station before giving us a tour round the company.

 

Rifco own a number of sites in the town, a production site for the manufacture of Balloon equipment, a storage warehouse and the main offices. The production site shows the current build of equipment and we were shown examples of the products at work. Custom balloon printing uses screen printing, a common printing technique where an image is created on a silk screen by light exposure. The screen is a fine mesh stretched over a wooden or metal frame. Special ink is forced down the silk screen and the image is transferred onto a balloon, partially inflated sitting underneath the screen. 

               

Exposure Box                                   Silk Screen 

 

To get the image onto the silk screen a design is created usually on a computer using one colour. If a shaded or multicolour design needs to be used, then common art packages such as adobe illustrator is used to transform the design into one colour. The design is printed onto an A4 sized acetate film. The acetate film is used with an exposure box to transfer the image onto a silk screen. Exposure boxes use light to seal the silk holes. Blocking the light with a design made on acetate film mean the ink applied to the screen will only flow through where the light has not exposed thus making a stencil and a transferable design. If an image does require multiple colours, then a separate screen is made up for each part of the design that has a different colour. As the process is far greater for multiple colour, the cost increases greatly and this is why the majority of balloon printing is based on a single colour. 

 

Rifco design and apply hydraulic methods around the common silk screen concept to produce semi and total automated products. The semi-automated methods involve the user setting up the design, pouring ink and partially inflating and holding the balloon while the machine moves the silk screen while forcing the ink onto the balloon. The totally automated machines involve the user setting up screens apply a bag of balloons and turning the machine on. A robotic style arm will collect, hold and inflate and the balloon, transfer the image onto the balloon, dry the ink, deflate, drop the balloon into a bag. The bags are counted and sealed automatically ready for distrubution.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get you custom printed balloons and logo printing from Important Occasions