How to Hot Stamp with Foil and Ribbons

Written by Matt Martin | Thu, Aug 03, 2017 @ 17:08 PM

Hot stamping is capable of creating vibrant, permanent marks on a wide variety of substrates. To get the best results when hot stamping, however, it is important to fully understand how to hot stamp properly with foil and ribbons.

What is Hot Stamping?

Hot stamping is a method of direct part marking that utilizes foils and ribbons to add color to a surface. Hot stamping can be done on many types of substrate including leather, cloth, vinyl, hard plastics, acrylic, as well as coated and uncoated substrates.

Decorative hot stamping is a popular marking method because it is relatively easy to create vibrant marks on surfaces that can be difficult to mark in other ways. For instance, cloth can be difficult to mark with other direct part marking methods but is relatively easy to mark with hot stamping.

How to Hot Stamp with Foil and Ribbons

Hot stamping is not a difficult process. In fact, hot stamping only requires three things: a hot stamping press, a metal die, and a foil or ribbon to add color.

The press heats up the metal die and is used to exert the downward pressure needed to make the mark. Here is an example of a decorative foil stamping printer. The hot stamping die, or type, is a piece of metal that has been manufactured with a letter, number, symbol, trademark, or logo. You can see some examples of dies and type here. Foils and ribbons are solid pieces of pigmented ink on a carrier that become transferable to another surface when heated. You can see some examples here.

How each press works is specific to that model, but in general you activate the press, the die or type heats up, the press engages the heated die, presses downward onto the substrate you are marking, and transfers the color from the ink rolls, foil, or ribbon that is directly over the raised portions of the die. This basic method for hot stamping can be used to customize nearly any design or logo, inlcuding numbers or letters.

Hot Stamp Foil and Ribbon Applications

Hot stamping, as we said above, is used in many industries for a variety of applications. Hot stamping is a good solution for applications where the material to be marked is delicate or fragile (like napkins or paper items), but it is also a common direct part marking solution for leather goods.

Hot stamping is especially popular with artisans because the tools needed to hot stamp aren’t prohibitively expensive or large. This makes it an ideal marking solution for artisans looking to customize their work.

You can see some of our customer's hot stamping applications in the articles below.

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