Why is Embossing an Excellent Marking Process?

Embossed tags are becoming more and more popular. The raised image creates a long lasting and durable solution for a wide variety of environments, and an economical way to produce variable data information.

What is Embossing?

Embossing is a permanent marking process used to create a raised design in a metal surface.

A design is pressed into a metal nameplate using a male/female die set. Raised characters provide excellent durability, as well as legibility. The embossed design is easy to read even when partially concealed by grit and grime, or even painted over.

Basic characters and numbers can be run on an industrial press for high quantity production. For unique designs or fonts, a tag manufacturer will produce a custom die set to create the impression.

Some organizations prefer to emboss their own information onto tags using an auto-feed embossing machine. This in-house marking not only saves time, but can be more cost efficient as well.

Embossing Machines

Embossing machines are a great tool for marking tags in-house. With a wide variety of machines available, the initial investment is significantly lower than in the past.

These machines have many character sizes available, allowing you to determine what character size is going to work best. This is chosen based on the information being marked, as well as the blank nameplate size.

These machines are typically auto-feed machines, meaning there is little physical interaction needed from employees. However this also means the tags must be flat, to work properly with the auto-feed system. If they are not flat, the machine can jam or break, causing damage to the machine and blanks.

Benefits of Embossing In-House

Having an embossing machine in-house allows your organization to mark parts rapidly. This is great for JIT shipping, and for emergency situations. This also helps if you may not know the information that will be marked until the last minute.

While hand stamping is a viable alternative, it cannot handle the scale that an embossing machine can.

Auto-feed loaders, along with conveyors to unload the tags make running large jobs a breeze. Additionally, tags with variable information are kept in order. This allows for quick and easy installation. 

The best benefit of having a machine in house is that it allows you to buy blank metal tags at a larger scale (at a more economical cost). Rather than sending small lists of variable information to a company at a time for them to mark, you can do this in-house to save on minimum order charges and expedite charges.

Final Thoughts

Embossing is one of the most popular marking processes for metal identification tags. Its raised characters provide extreme durability, with easy to read designs.

Tags can be produced with pre-marked information, or marked from blank tags in-house.

Embossing machines are a great solution for in-house marking. The quick speed and ease of training makes implementing machines into your current production process seamless.