How do companies print onto action figures?

For detailed small logo, fonts, graphics patterns on action figure you may try decal sheet printed with colored laser printer or desktop that uses waterproof pigment ink. Cut the printed image, soaked in water and apply it on the part of the action figure. Apply glossy or Matt top clear to protect it.😀

Well this is why a lot of figures have stickers. All I know is that before computer stuff, sometimes things like small logos or say a shirt design were screenprinted right onto the figure. Like with a t-shirt screen printing frame, only much more smaller. The other way big companies print onto figures is with a rubber stamp-like machine that comes down with a pliable inked head and presses the image onto the figure, sometimes in conjunction with the screen, sometimes not. There's ink feed behind the stamp so it can keep on going for lots of figures. The stamp is very soft and shapes around the figure (to a limited degree) and conforms to the shape. But it's limited how much wraparound it has. It's usually done before the figure is fully assembled so they can do any coloring to both the fronts and backs. Face parts are typically still spray-painted on manually. The worker will hold a cutout face stencil that fits like a little mask onto figure's face, and hit it with a quick shot of paint. There's a stencil for every color that keeps it from getting onto the rest of the face...one for just the red lips. One for just eyebrows and the black around the eye. One for the whites of the eyes, etc. I'm sure there's some kind of scanner that can scan models in 3D and depict it in a design program, because people scan stuff they made from scratch all the time for 3D printing. So for that I would search for "3D scanner" and look into the program it comes with and what it can do. But as far as just printing clothing and everything directly onto the figure, I know of no such thing as yet. When I need something really small and detailed I print out water stickers for my figures, like for a logo or something. Because action figures are typically complex, I cannot see how any kind of printer could possibly paint the whole thing around from every angle. You either have to paint with a brush, spray paint at it requiring masking, or have a special print head like the soft stamp I already mentioned. The big companies either cast the parts in colors they're meant to be in the first place and spray or stamp details on later, or machines spray the parts before they're assembled and then details are added. You can't just take a whole figure and have a computer somehow print all the clothes, skin colors, etc. on in one shot like it sounds like you're asking. There are too many variables. Big companies still employ a lot of workers on the assembly floor because there really is no machine that will just print out whatever you want on an action figure. You're asking for something that is a rather large process with multiple steps, both robotic and human work, to be all rolled into one kind of printer that basically does not exist. Plus, figures can be all kinds of different plastics, and when I think of coloring them, I think paint, not ink. Because it would have to be a very indelible ink, and most inks, from pens to printers, are water-based. Acrylic paint or even better enamel paints are more opaque and lasting on plastic, but I have never heard of a printer that used acrylic or enamel paint, outside of a factory or something. Even cars are hand or robot arm spray painted.