I wanted to spend a little time going over about how the process die stamping and engraved printing works to give you a little insight into what we do. It is sad to say that with the invention of modern printing methods most people don’t know what Die stamping and engraved printing are.

Let’s start with the basics the plate or die. All die stamping and engraved printing is based of a copper plate or steel die. They are both engraved differently, and in the U.K. at least there are very few people left who still work and engrave steel dies. The majority of our printing here at Capital of London is now done on Copper Plates; we are still able to engrave steel dies but because of the charges involved with this most people prefer to use copper now, because of this I will be focusing mainly on copper although the engraving is similar for both of them the main difference being that steel being harder makes it harder and more difficult to cut, although this does mean the steel die lasts longer and the details is much clearer provided a master engraver has worked on the engraving.

All plates are engraved in an intaglio process; this means that the text is engraved in to the plate rather than being raised from the plate. The ink is then used to fill in the groves from the engraving.

There are 2 ways of engraving copper plates they can either be hand engraved or the can be machined engraved using a process called Photoengraving

Hand Engraving: - The image or text is cut in to the copper plate using a burin, a metal tool with a sharp point, this is to remove the metal and create the lines of the image or text. This is a highly skilled profession. Because of the high level of microscopic detail that can be achieved by a master engraver counterfeiting of hand engraved designs is nearly impossible, hence the reason why modern bank notes are almost always engraved.

Our hand engraver at work

Photoengraving: - In this process a digital image is projected onto a photosensitive metal plate. The chemical coating on the photosensitive plate reacts to light and will retain an image of whatever was projected on to it. The plate is then sprayed with an acid, normally Ferric chloride, which will eat away at all the areas that have had light projected on them creating the lines for the image or text.

Unless you work in the field it is hard to tell the difference between the 2 forms of engraving, but the hand engraving will give you detail and clarity that you would never find in a machined engraved plate. It has become almost second nature to me now to spot the difference between the two.

While your plate is being engraved you can choose your paper. There are lots of different types to choose from so I will just give you a brief overview. All paper and card in Europe is measured in grams per square metre (GSM) in America the weight of the paper or card is usually the weight assigned to a paper is the weight of a ream of 500 sheets before the paper is cut into the size it is sold to the end customer.

Once the plate has been engraved we can start the printing. At Capital of London we have 8 inverted Waite and Saville Printing Presses of various sizes. It was made towards the beginning of the 20^th centaury, and is still going strong now. OF course we could upgrade our presses to newer machines that are automated but it would be hard to find a modern machine that is able to compete, in terms of quality, to one of these older machine. It takes a lot of care, as I am sure you can imagine making sure that these machines are in the best working condition.

Waite and Saville printing press

These presses are designed to use around 2 tonnes of pressure per square inch and it is this extraordinary force combined with high quality paper that gives die stamping and engraved printing a feeling of quality that is impossible to match.

Before we can start the printing we need to cut a force. This is very important, as without a proper force you will get bruising on the reverse of your paper. We are often surprised to see other die stamped orders where on the reverse all you see is a square block, this is a classic sign that the printers have not cut the force correctly which we assume is just a lack of knowledge. We often hear how the only way to tell die stamping apart is through the bruising on the reverse, this is wrong. Any good engraved printer will be able to tell you that if the force is cut out correctly you will not get any bruising at all and it is our personal opinion that anything other than this is not worth the money you are paying for it.

The copper plate is cut to match the size of an internal steel die, and it is mounted on to this. The die is the inserted securely into the “die box” at the rear of the machine. At the start of any setup we make sure that the pressure on the force plate has been removed completely.

Once the plate has been secured at the back, we relieve the extra pressure off the pad, and then we bring the plate to the front and stop it. Before we can start the printing we have to cut 2 pieces of white display board approximately 1/8 of an inch thick each and this will then be glued together onto the force plate inline with the actual copper plate. The copper plate is then stamped on to the white board and the pressure is gradually increased so the engraved area is noticeable. Once this has been achieved the plate is then stamped again this time with ink giving you a definite image of your engraving. The force plate is then removed from the machine and we cut out everything apart from the detail that has been stamped onto it, leaving a raised image that will correspond the engraved details on the plate.

Once this has been done we can start the printing. The first sheets that are printed are to test the pressure on the paper. The pressure is gradually increased until all the detail can be seen clearly and it produces a crisp image, on the reverse of the paper you should just have indentations of the details from the plate.

Once we are happy with the pressure we then have to get the “lay position” of the printing. This is to make sure that the engraved image is positioned on the paper in the correct place. It is done on a trial and error basis effectively we will stamp a sheet measure all the distance and then make any corrections that are needed, until we re satisfied with the position.

Once this is finished the set up of the machine is done and we are ready to print. On average it takes us around 1-1.5 hours to set up a new plate in a printing press. This means that if an order has 2 plates each plate needs to be set up separately which means we have to spend 2-4 hours just setting up the machines before we even start printing.

Once the set up is finished we are able to start the printing, the majority of the work in the process is the set up for example it can take up to 1.5 hours to set up a press for Business cards, but will only take around 15- 20 minutes to print 100.

Unlike lithography or thermography there is no way to print multiple colours with engraved printing or die stamping. Each different colour needs a separate plate and a separate set up, as each colour is laid down individually, this process requires extremely accurate multi colour registration. Unfortunately this does make printing with a die inherently slower and a little bit more expensive than other printing methods, however the thickness of the ink combines with the wonderful tactile effects more than compensate for this.

I hope this gives you an insight into how we print your stationary. Stay tuned as next week I will be discussing the history of social stationary and why it is still important today.

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