Reasons and Solutions for Hot Stamping Problems

Although many printing crafts are finding their place in printing and packaging industry, hot stamping is still quite popular and favorable among them. Hot stamping boxes help the packaging shine bright and attract attentions. Hot stamping makes it quite classy and elegant for shopping bags, gift packaging bags and so on.

Hot stamping transfers the aluminum layer to the surface of printing object using the hot pressure transferring theory. Under certain temperature and pressure, the hot-melt silicone resin isolation and adhesive layers are heated to be melt and the isolation layer gets less bounded so that the aluminum layer gets isolated from the base layer to the printing object.

It becomes handy if we understand the common hot stamping failures and the solutions to solve them.

Poor hot stamping could be found quite frequently. The reason for poor hot stamping could be low stamping temperature or pressure or excessive speed. The surface of the ink layer getting crystallized could also cause poor hot stamping issue. While a thick background of the ink layer affects adhesion of the aluminum layer to the paper surface, which could also cause poor hot stamping. Improper selection of the anodized aluminum directly affects the stamping quality as well.

The solutions to solve above problems could be to adjust the stamping temperature, pressure and speed; to avoid crystallization of the ink surface; to avoid overprinting and to select suitable type of anodized aluminum.

When the aluminum to be stamped to the printed paper, it often happens for the printed ink or UV oil being pulled off from the surface. There are several reasons for this issue. Firstly, the ink is not dry enough after printed to the paper; secondly, excessive white ink is applied, in a result, the adhesion gets weak , leaving the inks on the surface. In this case, the anodized aluminum could not stick to the surface quite well, on the contrary, pulling the ink layer off the paper surface. To avoid above issues, the hot stamping should be carried out after inks get totally dry. Or, anodized aluminum with better transferrable property could be selected. Besides, the application amount of white ink should be strictly controlled to make sure of suitable adhesion.