What is hot stamping ?

There are numerous techniques for printing on objects. Hot stamping is one of them. It entails sticking an already printed film on to the object by using a sort of giant iron. This technique is used often for textiles but it requires a lot of adjustment of settings to achieve a good quality result.

There are two different techniques. The first one, which is the oldest, consists of making a kind of stencil, which will take the form of the part to be marked, like a stamp. This stencil is heated up and then strikes the substrate thanks to the use of a hot stamping machine. The second technique is digital and does not require the creation of a stencil, as that is replaced by the printhead on the digital hot stamping printer.

Hot stamping consumes quite a lot of inputs because the printed films have to be paid for and these are different for each file. In terms of speed, this technique does not allow for runs of more than one product per second, so it is relatively slow.

Hot stamping is used on substrates such as plastic, paper, cardboard and metal. Its use is widespread in areas such as the food sector, wines and spirits, luxury goods and cosmetics. The high quality result can leave products looking very good, especially their packaging and labels.

There can be numerous advantages to using hot stamping. It can give a metallic look to your products or packaging. It can also embellish paper or cardboard to suggest a higher quality of product.

While hot marking can produce a very nice appearance, the technology remains quite slow and expensive (cost of inputs) even if you use a digital hot stamping printer.

In order to print large quantities very fast, digital printing is still the most efficient technology. Digital printing machines like those in our Iris range can achieve an output of 160 metres per minute while remaining easy to handle. Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information.