Throughout our time as a business, we have had the pleasure of working with clients from a plethora of industries and markets. What our work involves is applying functional and decorative hot transfer foils, protection films, self adhesive tapes and PVC films to a myriad of materials. Coming in a range of thicknesses and designs, there are very few limits to what we can do with our foiling services.
Just like with hard to stamp coatings, the initial steps when foiling with plastic is ensuring that the substance has been treated correctly and possesses a dyne level of over 38. If you don’t pre-treat the plastic sheets first, problems with the pin holes or “shark toothing” shall happen during the stamping process.
Similar to how there are numerous foils for the differing types of paper stock, there are dedicated adhesive formulations that exist for plastic. Foil stampers have to check their supplies and use a product that’s particularly suited to plastics. A graphics foil would not be the most ideal choice for applications such as these.
Since plastics can result in more issues with air entrapment or gassing than the majority of paper stocks, making use of a cylinder-style mechanism for applying the foil is a decent plan. If applied through a machine such as this, the foil will be permitted to lie across the plastic sheet.
The above stamping motion is different from that of the vertical platen style. This presses the hot die into the substrate directly, trapping the air. One other advantage to cylinder-style machines is that the rolling actions aid in preventing the plastic from overheating and melting in the stamping process.
At Foiling Services we consider every possible situation when working with plastics and plan accordingly. With the right tools and strategies, there shouldn’t be any issues that come up whilst adding a foil to plastic products. If our services catch your interest and you’d like to know more, feel free to contact us.