Hot Foil Blocking

Hot foil printing, or hot stamping as it is call in the USA, is a decorative print finish. The printing foil comes in a roll which is cut to size to suit the print job.

The foil consists of a clear carrier film onto which the pigment of the colour to be printed is applied, then this is backed by a heat sensitive adhesive.

The adhesive side of the foil is placed against the ribbon and a heated metal printing plate is pressed against the foil. The heat releases the adhesive, and the shape of the printing plate is stuck to the ribbon surface.

Printing foil comes in a wide variety of finishes, such as metallic, diffraction, multi-colour and many others. The limitation for ribbon printing is that the print colour is sitting on the surface of the ribbon attached by a very fine layer of adhesive. The surface finish can degrade quickly if the ribbon is roughly handled.

Foil printing can be made permanent by screen printing an adhesive layer and then heat applying the foils. This is the process that is used to print tee shirts and make a washable image. The extra The heat has removed the pigment from the carrier and stuck it to the ribbon process makes it expensive to produce small quantities of ribbon.

Art work requirements for hot foil printing

When printing onto ribbon the best results are achieved if the printing does not have fine detail. Lines that are close together tend to ‘bridge’ the foil and appear as a solid.

This image would be good for foiling.

This image would be more of a problem and detail will be lost.

Artwork Preparation

• Artwork image arrives from the customer as a jpeg file.
• It is converted to a vector image using ‘Corel Trace’.
• The vector is sized and spaced for the ribbon width.
• A visual is sent to the customer.
• The file is sent to the block maker where the printing plate is acid etched as a reversed embossed.