Did you know that the first hot stamping patent was recorded in 1892 by Ernst Oeser?
In book printing on leather and paper in the 19th century, hot stamping became a common way of adding gold tooling or embossing. The approach became popular in the 1950s and 1960s to designate plastic. But, nowadays, the applications are limitless.
If you’ve been thinking about getting a hot stamping machine or exploring foiling as a whole, you’ve come to the right place. Keep on reading for our full breakdown of everything you need to know about hot stamping.
Hot Stamping 101: The Foundation and Process
Metal foils or pre-dried inks are transferred to a surface using a hot stamping lithography printing method. It involves heated image molds or stamping dies.
When you use a hot stamping machine, you heat up an engraved mold or die, and press a marking foil onto its surface. Engineers may produce beautiful embossed patterns on parts and assemblies in post-production. They use foil where the hot stamp comes into contact with the final material.
An adhesion base and a release layer are both included in the construction of hot stamping foils. Even hot stamping three-dimensional pictures with holographic foil are now possible. It’s all thanks to digital printing innovations.
People often use hot stamping to add a personal touch to items, a flexible, accurate, and time-saving printing technology. With a machine like https://universalengraving.com/product-pages/nw-dies-tooling/rotary/uniflex you can rest assured that you’ll have a closer final product to a piece of art than anything else.
Materials for Foil Stamping
It is possible to divide foils into four groups based on their texture and color. Choosing your foil is one of the most fun parts of foiling, and the possibilities are almost limitless if you’re ready to spend a little more.
Metallics such as gold, silver, and copper reflect the light in the metallic foils. Most printers consider them industry-standard; therefore, you can expect them to have a small number of them on hand. You can also order other metallic foils, such as rose gold or metallic red and blue.
In contrast to metallic foils, pigment foils are available in various matte and gloss finishes. Use them to create eye-catching colors and textures for text or logos.
Then, you have pearl foils that give ordinarily transparent or translucent hue a pearlescent, ethereal gloss. It’s a beautiful, discreet alternative for exquisite stationery like invitations and business cards. You may utilize them to add more tactile shine than color to the design.
To the untrained eye, holographic foils seem silver before application but reflect a spectrum of colors back to the observer. Their usage in holiday-themed artwork is prevalent because of their youthful appeal.
The Benefits of Using a Hot Stamp Machine
You can use hot stamping to handle a wide variety of typical product materials. These include plastics, rubbers, metals, and more specialist materials like wood and leather.
Even if the item is coated, you may apply hot stamping foil without destroying the coating. From pencils and book bindings to cosmetic packaging and cable ties, a wide variety of things may benefit from this process.
First, it’s really efficient. Using pre-dried inks or metal foil rolls instead of liquid ink allows engineers to avoid messy mixing and cleanup. Second, hot stamping consistently generates high-quality results.
The adhesion bases are intended to have a stronghold on product surfaces, independent of the pigment or metallic hue of the foil.
You’ll need specialty foils for the correct adhesion of specific materials. For instance, you might need leather, which product managers should remember. It is possible to brand plastic or wood pieces with a metal die pressed into them.
This mark will persist even after the foil has been removed. And, even though marking foils are supposed to be long-lasting, they might fade over time due to environmental conditions.
Moreover, the hot stamping technique is not only useful as a finishing procedure but also has other uses. For example, in the automobile industry, hot stamping may be used to optimize the malleability of steel. For this method, the dies are cold when pushed into hot steel.
This forms Martensite microstructures in the steel, resulting in a powerful component. As a result, hot stamping is beneficial in the construction of automobile interiors and safety cages, among other things.
The Constraints and Limits of Hot Stamping
Hot stamping foil fabrication has one main drawback: it cannot print tiny letters without losing definition. Once a mold or die for the pattern has been created, you can use stamping foil without trouble. Pad printing or screen printing are better solutions for high-definition tiny lettering.
The die material that pushes the stamping foil is another critical issue. You may find all of these materials in everyday life.
In terms of cost and ease of production, magnesium dyes win hands out. Hardened steel dies are nearly unbreakable and deliver the most excellent foil transfers. On the other hand, copper and brass are more durable but more expensive to create.
Steel dies are costly to make, but they save a lot of money when utilized in large production runs because of their longevity.
It’s difficult to hot stamp objects with intricate forms or surfaces that aren’t flat. As a result, several manufacturers use silicone-based stamping dies to address this problem.
Silicone stamps are more flexible than metal stamps. It allows for more accurate imprinting on a variety of irregularly shaped or textured surfaces.
Using a Hot Stamp for the Present and Future
Hopefully, our explainer has highlighted some of the nuance lost in the art of hot stamping. Hot stamping is an excellent way to personalize or adorn items or improve the malleability of materials like steel. This method may be used in various ways and is also relatively straightforward.
And, if you’re hungry for more information on design and art, you should check out our products page for all the additional tips and guides you could possibly need.
