Conventional embossing - description and characteristics

Embossing is the production process of post-printing finishing, printing on printed or souvenir products of images using foil or without it, under pressure and high temperature.

Stamping Embossing

Embossing is used for making postcards, business cards, labels and other souvenirs. The most impressive is the congreve stamping with foil, the finished material has a presentable and colorful appearance.

Types of embossing:

• Blind (blind) embossing - extruding the impression below the surface of the material used without the use of foil;
• Stamping embossing - pressing the material between a special cliché, matrix and patrician, to give the image a convexity; Can be blind or foil;
• Hot foil stamping - the process of thermal transfer to a tight material of metallized powder from a film by means of a cliche. Various types of foil are used - metallized, textured, pigmented, holographic, etc.

Conventional embossing is widely used for finishing covers of diaries, as well as business cards, a purse and other products made of artificial and natural leather.

Cliches for stamping are photopolymeric and metal (zinc, magnesium, copper, brass, sometimes steel):

• Photopolymer cliches are used for small print runs (up to 1000 prints) - business cards and souvenirs. This is the most economical option;
• Zinc cliches are used in the manufacture of products up to 10,000 impressions;
• Magnesium clichés have their advantages: the ability to print on any material, rapid production, circulation capacity (up to 50,000 impressions). Has a print depth of 0.7-2.5 mm (depending on the material);
• Brass clichés are produced on special engraving machines by machining. Benefits - the ability to give the cliche several levels of depth, giving the embossing elements a greater height. Are applied on soft materials with multilevel convex. The circulation rate depends on the thickness of the cliche (more than 50,000 impressions).

Photopolymer plates are a photopolymer deposited on a metal substrate and protected by a film from light exposure.

Metal plates are manufactured in two ways - etching (chemical) and milling (mechanical). Conventional embossing and other types of hot stamping are mainly performed by clichés made by chemical means.

The foil for embossing has the following composition:

1) lavsan base;

2) a thermo-breaking wax-layer, which breaks down when heated, releasing the lower layers of the foil;

3) a paint layer (a layer of varnish or paint) with a binder;

4) a thin layer of aluminum, present only on holographic and metallized foils;

5) an adhesive layer intended for gluing the layers to the material.

The cliche, heated to the required temperature, releases the color layers from the lavsan base and adheres them to the embossing material. The heating temperature is selected depending on the type of foil, type of cliche, embossed material, imprint pattern, equipment used, and many other factors.