A Sweet Branding Opportunity: Using Direct-to-Object Printing to Decorate Candy Tins

Editor's Note: This article was written for Promo Impressions. For more content on promotional products decoration, be sure to subscribe to the biweekly newsletter at PromoImpressions.com. 

One perennially popular application for industry events and trade shows is the small but mighty candy tin. Tempting for busy and on-the-go attendees looking to pick up a little treat to take away, the candy tin ensures a company’s branding stays with their target audience long after the show.

UV inkjet direct-to-object printing technology makes it possible to decorate candy tins with personalized messages or turn them into full-color works of art that boost a brand’s image and reach — making it a great promotional product. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to do this.

1. Digital vs Pad Printing: Choose the best method for your desired outcome

When it comes to printing onto candy tins, our customers typically consider two routes: digital printing or pad printing. Both options are excellent choices, so your selection will depend on your desired outcome.

Digital printing is the ideal choice for businesses looking to create full-color CMYKW images directly on the flat or slightly curved lids of candy tins. Pad printing, on the other hand, is a great low-cost option for simple one- or two-color logos. However, digital UV decoration of candy tins really elevates the product and provides limitless options, so this is the method we’re exploring in this tutorial.

This tutorial uses the Inkcups X5-T flatbed UV digital printer. | Credit: Inkcups

2. Choose your candy tin

Metal candy tins are a popular choice. Typically, metal candy tins are either aluminium or steel, which can sometimes be coated. Some customers also opt for metal tins with clear plastic windows in the lids. Any of these options are fine, as you can digitally print onto uncoated or coated tins and even onto the plastic window if desired. When choosing your tin’s shape, look for a consistent size and shape for all the parts. Flat or slightly curved tins work best for a flatbed direct-to-object printer.

Another trick of the trade: Opting to print onto white tins can speed up production slightly because it enables you to forgo any white ink needed in your design. If you’re printing onto different color tins, you can always add white back in, but you will sacrifice a little time.

A final tip on candy tin choice when ordering in bulk: We’ve noticed they often come individually wrapped with a protective plastic covering, so when planning production, be sure to set aside enough time to unwrap them if needed.

3. Consider pretreatment and choose your inks

Depending on your adhesion requirements, pretreatment may or may not be necessary. When customers have specific adhesion requirements for an application they’ve not done before, we typically suggest they send us 20 or so of their products so we can advise on the best ink series and primer to use, as well as any pretreatment that may be necessary.

UV inks are specific to materials, so the best ink for a plastic candy tin will differ from one made out of metal. Generally speaking, Inkcups’ flagship hard goods ink, the S1 series, is perfect for metal candy tins and even for the plastic window in some lids.

One additional consideration is whether the inks are at risk of migrating through the tin to the mints or candy inside, but the best way to ensure this won’t happen is to have your substrate tested beforehand.

4. Get your artwork print-ready

To get your files ready to print, you will need artwork in a vector format: PDF, EPS, or TIFF file. Off-the-shelf software such as Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop are great for artwork preparation. When speccing out your design, remember to avoid low-quality JPEGs, and if you are going to be printing photos onto your candy tins, make sure those image files are high resolution and over 300 dpi.

5. Set up the machine

Before you can print on your candy tins, make sure the flatbed printer is set up correctly. Printing a full bed of candy tins does require some initial setup, and the time it takes will depend on the experience of the technician. For an experienced technician, the process can take just a few minutes.

The first step is to create or obtain custom tooling or jigs to hold your specific shape and size tins in place during printing. There are a wide variety of fixtures for inkjet printing, but on flatbed inkjet machines such as the X5-T, a traveling fixture is the most common. When using a traveling fixture, the pieces you want to print are placed into the fixture, and the filled fixture will travel through the machine.

Credit: Inkcups

After the ink has been laid down on the products the entire unit will travel back out of the printer where you can take out the completed pieces, refill, and send the next set in. To reduce the load time, you can use multiple fixtures, which allows you to prefill one and have it ready to send through while the other is being unloaded.

6. Build your template

Once the tooling is screwed onto the flatbed, you can begin building a template to ensure precise artwork placement on each tin. Inputting key measurements, including the height, inside width and length, overall width of the tooling, and part origin, will enable ColorPrint’s flatbed software to generate an accurate template.

Once your artwork is uploaded, the software ensures each design is perfectly centred on the lid of every candy tin.

7. And….print!

Once the machine is set up to print, we find you can print an entire bed of candy tins with full CMYKW images in two to four minutes, depending on the type of tin you use. For coated candy tins, reflectivity can be bi-directional using both lamps, and the entire bed can be printed in under two minutes. However, for metal mint tins, we recommend running only one UV light to keep reflectivity down and keeping the fixtures dark or matte to reduce reflectivity. When opting for uni-directional printing, the entire bed can be printed in less than four minutes.

8. Play with special effects

In addition to printing, you can also get creative with varnish. By playing around with different layers and varnish placement, you can reap the full benefits of UV digital printing, achieving effects like tone-on-tone, contour print, and spot varnish.

9. Challenges to look out for and how to overcome these

Occasionally, issues with fixturing, coating changes, paint changes, manufacturing issues with the candy tins, and deviations from batches can cause issues during printing. To avoid these, we recommend a quality control check of batches before each print run. You can have gauges created to check that all tins are the same height, and we find that buying from the same manufacturer can often reduce the risk of inconsistencies in products.

10. Spread the candy love!

Now that your candy tins have been transformed into works of art, you can share the candy love with your customers.