Plastic card manufacturing process

[Tomcat]

The production of plastic cards is a rather complex and high-tech process. As with the production of any printed products, the process of producing plastic cards begins with the development of the card design. Since developing a plastic card layout is a specific matter, special knowledge is accordingly required to create a card design. With a professional approach, you should definitely take into account the possibility of using colored plastic in the production, the type of printing that will be used in the production of cards, and, of course, the types of card personalization that the customer has chosen.

Preparing for printing​

The next stage of the plastic card manufacturing process is pre-press preparation. It involves the production of film photo outputs using special equipment, which are then developed onto metal plates for subsequent use in the offset printing process. In addition, paper or plastic of certain sizes are prepared. Several printing technologies are used in the production of plastic cards.

Printing methods​

Offset printing​

The most common method is offset printing. The most widespread use of offset printing in the production of plastic cards is a consequence of the highest quality, high speed and low cost of prints. When making cards from plastic, it is necessary to use UV inks. Printing machines must be equipped with additional drying modules. The process for making laminated cards is different from making varnished cards. In the first case, sheet-fed printing is used, and in the second, the piece-by-piece method is used. The use of offset printing allows the application of various protective elements to the produced cards: microfont, non-copyable raster of lines of various thicknesses, images visible only in ultraviolet light, images with a color that changes depending on the viewing angle.

Sublimation printing​

Another printing option is the process of making cards using special equipment - sublimation printers. This is called sublimation printing. The advantages of this type of printing are that this method makes it possible to print in small quantities and without pre-press preparation. As for the disadvantages of this type of printing, they include the low quality of the resulting image and the fairly high cost of printing. This type of printing is mainly used in the production of identification cards for printing photographs, personal numbers and barcodes on them. Well, the most rarely used types of printing include silk screen printing and hot stamping.

Silk screen printing​

With silk screen printing, an image is applied to a card. by rolling paint through a pre-prepared mesh with the required image. The structure of the mesh resembles silk, which is where the name of this type of printing comes from.

Foil stamping​

Hot stamping is performed on special presses. Under the influence of strong pressure and high temperature, the foil is transferred through the cliche to the card. Hot foil stamping makes it possible to completely convey metallic shine (gold, silver, etc.).

Card lamination​

The next step in the card making process is to apply a protective coating. Two methods are used: lamination and varnishing. When laminating in special presses, the process of sintering layers of plastic is carried out, as a result of which the card becomes a monolithic whole. A standard laminated plastic card consists of four layers: a layer of transparent plastic that protects the design on the front side of the card, a layer of plastic with the design on the front side of the card, a layer of plastic with the design on the back of the card, a layer of transparent plastic that protects the design on the back of the card. In addition, only with lamination it is possible to hide the contactless card antenna and microchip inside the cards. When used as a protective varnish coating, the card surface is protected by applying UV varnish. This method is preferably used when producing small runs of cards. It is more preferable to use lamination as a protective coating.

Card cutting​

The next stage is the so-called cutting of cards. Special marks are applied to the sheets, which are positioned by optical sensors and struck by a cutting stamp. The use of high-tech equipment allows us to achieve high quality cards produced.

Personalization​

Then it's time to personalize the cards. Here everything depends on the parameters chosen by the client. In the production of express payment cards and lottery cards, personalization is used using a pin code and scratch panels. If, when using cards, the method of identification is to automate the process, a bar code is used. There are different types of barcodes - EAN13, EAN8, CODE128, CODE39 and others. In the production of bank, club, discount cards and gift certificates, embossing is usually used - mechanical extrusion of alphanumeric information on the surface of the card.

Another type of personalization is the application of a magnetic stripe, which is a magnetic storage medium with a small memory capacity. Typically, information about the card number or customer identification number is encoded onto the magnetic stripe. Magnetic stripes are mainly applied to discount, bank, transport and identification cards.

Also, a signature panel is often applied to the card, which is a white window in which the card owner can place his signature. The signature panel serves as an excellent way to identify a client; it is mainly used on bank, discount, club and identification cards.

Card numbering is occasionally used. Mainly in the production of discount cards. It is a printed variable card number in black, which is usually applied by thermal transfer or inkjet.

The further stages of the card making process should not be discussed extensively; we will only mention them in passing. These are packaging, quality control and delivery.

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