Embossing - What If…
I know I have asked a number of questions lately about embossing and thanks for the feed back so here is one more. Since I use a Windmill my main issue is good clearance of the counter and the grippers. The prior thread gave us some good info. The vendor made counter worked better than anything I have made so far. I was wondering with a thin stock such as a label stock or text stock would .015 work well. I know a .030 counter is the norm but for a thiner stock there is only so much lift I can get anyway would the .015 counter ( which should work best with my grippers) still provide a good product. Also has anyone tried this?
Your die maker will usually etch the die depth to either your specs or to the stock being used. Watch out for sticker stock! You can be embossing to what seems just fine until you peel the sticker off and find out it is bursting through the deepest parts of the image. The die depth will determine the total counter height. I will usually run a layer of mylar over the die on stickers so is does’t cut as bad, or, “chip” the ink/toner off. On the Windmill, if you don’t have a foil drive, you can tape a piece over the die. Replace it as needed, but keep your eye on it. Watch for the tape giving way and the mylar folding over.
I used thin counters on everything we ran, and we got good results. For our single-level dies, we went with .012 on just about everything, If we had a die that was too deep, we would use mylar, with about a 1/8” pull. (That also worked for embossing over wet ink.)
Our other method was to use .002 copper to shallow out dies that were too deep. Our source escapes me… But it was easy to use, cut it with scissors, tape it over the face of the die. A miracle fix for sure. Sharp relief without cutting the stock. Good luck!
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Thank you for the feedback. It has given us a number of ideas that may help in our pursuit of proper embossing. The windmill is so accurate I never thought I would some day prefer it to my regular printing presses.