What is the Film - What does film mean??

As a general term film can simply be used to refer to any thin layer of material thin is a relative term but modern manufacturing techniques are capable of creating layers that are anything from fractions of a nanometre nm 0 000 000 001 metres to several micrometres m 0 000 001 metres In labelling the term is used to refer more specifically to a thin transparent or opaque material manufactured from synthetic polymers e g polyester polyethylene polyolefin vinyl etc and used to create face materials and backing sheets in pressure sensitive labels

Glossary

Thermal Transfer Printing - What is thermal transfer printing?

Definition of THERMAL TRANSFER PRINTING:

A method of printing; this process creates an image by using a thermal print head to melt specific areas of a ribbon so that these areas are transferred to the substrate being printed. The image carrier or imaging device in thermal transfer printers is the thermal print head, which contains heating elements (usually pins) arranged in a matrix (meaning that thermal transfer printing is a form of dot matrix printing). The pins are heated selectively to form a pattern that represents the image being printed, which means that thermal transfer printing is also a form of digital printing; the image or document being printed must be in a bitmap format (the image is represented by a grid of coloured dots, or pixels), which can be recreated by the matrix of pins in the print head.

The ribbon is made up of two layers; a wax and/or resin-based ink and a backing film (which carries the ink through the printing process). The ribbon and the substrate pass beneath the thermal print head together, where the areas of ink that pass beneath the heated elements in the print head melt and separate from the backing film, which causes them to transfer onto the substrate and form the final printed image.

Thermal transfer printing offers a variety of advantages over the similar method of direct thermal printing; thermal transfer printers can print monochromatic or colour images (ribbons are available in a number of colours), can print a number of different materials (not just specialised thermal paper), are capable of high-speed printing, and produce print of a higher quality and durability (including some resistance to extreme temperatures, sterilisation, chemicals, and UV light).

Thermal transfer printing involves printing substrates that are produced on rolls, and common uses include printing asset labels, barcode labels, inventory labels, product labels, and price labels.

A barcode label printer; this machine uses thermal transfer printing to print barcodes onto self adhesive labels.

Here is the Harvard-style citation to use if you would like to reference this definition of the term thermal transfer printing:
Label Planet (2020) What is thermal transfer printing? | Thermal Transfer Printing Definition. Available at: https://www.labelplanet.co.uk/glossary/thermal-transfer-printing/ (Accessed: January 1, 2024).

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