Hi guys, years ago I worked at a CD manufacturing place that printed using both screen printers and the transfer printing you see in the process. It was a bit fancier with automated ink wells and squeegees, but same process. I recall the biggest challenge with the transfer process was the viscosity of the ink, the volatility of the solvents in the inks, the relative humidity of the air, and absolute cleanliness of everything. The smallest contaminant would wreck the ink wiper, nick the squeegee blade and you'd have a tiny stripe across your image. The magical part, though, was picking enough ink from the printing plate, transferring it on the silicone pad and while it was moving through air, flashing off some of the solvents, so that the ink would stick cleanly to the target surface - a watch dial face for example. Too wet and the ink wouldn't transfer. Too dry and the ink wouldn't transfer. Or it would string (think cotton candy spinning all those pesky threads). Anyway, getting the machine running and stable was an art, and then multiply that by a 3 or 4 color image....
The machine was called a "Tampo-matic", and the silicone pads were tampons. French, or Latin root, for 'pad' is the source of the word tampon. The guys and gal that ran that machine were whiz kids.
The screen printers were easier to use, more reliable, but the images were not near the quality of the pad transfer printer.
I'm sure ink technology has changed in the intervening 30 years, so I hope Don has an easier time than we did. It was a cool job, though.
Keep us in the loop, Don.