Know the Facts

No Sense in Cheating when it comes to Foil

By Michael King President & CEO of Eagle Systems, Inc.

I have been building foil machines and process for 45 years, and 2020 is Eagle Systems 30 years in business doing just that. After reviewing some articles and a recent Foil Cheat Sheet, I felt compelled to clarify some of the information and inaccurate information found in this document. We at Eagle manufacturer both hot (HF) & cold foil (CF) machinery. We are also the leader in development of both make-ready and process of both (HF) & (CF) which are actually processes similarly used in digital. Some folks might say (HF) is more vibrant or higher gloss while Cold Foil (CF) is glittery. After recent developments and tests, apple to apples, we have now hit gloss levels of exact same levels. The piece tested was a solid (HF) silver with no coating and was 650 at a 20 degree angle. We hit 640 with (CF). 100 points you cannot see a difference to the naked eye, 10 points is right there. Our next development and test, we expect to surpass this by at least 50-points with (CF), before the end of this 2019. One of the differences between (HF) and (CF) is, (HF) has flashing along the edges and most time seen with the naked eye and (CF) has a clean edge with zero flashing, if done properly. Sometimes folks want that embossed or debossed look on their foiled product. The beauty is CF can have this look, but it would be a second operation, but sometimes can be done during die cutting process not adding an additional pass.  

Let’s clarify the hot foil side a bit. A foil stamping press, small automatic or hand fed clamshell or large Auto-platen press, are all platen presses. The platen is the surface your sheet is on prior to pressing against the die surface. The bed is what holds your chase, or heated chase, or die chase, or honeycomb chase, which holds your stamping dies. The various colors of foil are limited to the manufacturers of the foil and they do come in hundreds of shades, but the sky is not truly the limit. The run lengths are not really the tell tail of which process best suits the (HF) or (CF) of Digital Foil (DF). It is mainly what you are producing in size or area vs variables. Large coverage area is best for cold foil as it is simple to run and large areas in hot foil would not be so easy to run. HF & CF both can run on coated stocks and both can run on uncoated stocks. However, (HF) will flatten the grain of the paper, which is the look your client might want, and (CF) will follow the grain and give a completely different but elegant look.  Both have their places and are very sell-able looks. Eagle perfected the technology to do (CF) on uncoated stocks and debut this to the world market in 2015. Micro etching can be done on both (HF) and (CF). The cost difference between (HF) & (CF) when it comes to the dies is significant as one hot foil die could be 50.00 to 250.00 US dollars and any multiples needed for the job. (CF) die is a 30.00 printing plate and a very simple make-ready. The average make ready time on a standard 8 up hot foil job with tight registration could take easily 4 hrs. The same job in (CF) should take no more than 20 to 30 minutes, no more than an additional print tower make ready. While running (HF) you might tweak your make ready in several times throughout your run due to different variables. (CF) is like and treated like a printing tower and additional make-ready should not be needed after initial setup as long as you understand the windows of opportunity with the tools you have to work with. (CF) application colors are unlimited and truly the sky is the limited, because it is every color in the rainbow printed on top of silver foil 98% of the time. It is also available in gold but not recommended by me. Most use silver only for all (CF) needs. (CF) truly saves money on the shortest of runs by far over (HF), although it is extremely economical all ranges of foil work. Small caption work, like Eagle System Logo in 3” x 2” format only on a sheet one up, would not be economical if it were a large (CF) run, but most economical in (HF).  But if the job was large coverage, (CF) would win hands down. The beauty of (CF) above all is it can very easily run (HF) work, replace Met-poly or laminated board, or Mira Foil. Mira Foil is a very costly polymer combined with microchips of aluminum creating a less than perfect foil look. Everything (CF) can do, CANNOT be done (HF), Met-poly, laminated board, or Mira Foil. Cold Foil is the most economical fastest way to foil. The process with proper equipment likes speed and we have run many jobs at 15-18,000 sph, while (HF) with small area and blind registration could possibly run as much a 7k. A fair number would be 4000 sph or less would be normal for hot foil stamping. If you want variable data in the foil then digital would be the only way to go, but substrates will matter here. The digital world is not the packaging world. It is more mailing and some commercial print world. Packaging world is about branding the same not different colors or different look. But there is a world for digital.

I have led the Hot Foil machine and process world for many years and after extreme R&D by myself and my company, I have come to learn Cold Foil is the future of Foil. Any other Foil process will work but (CF) can be done with higher quality, faster to market and the most economical way to bring foil to your package. With looks, that can only be done the cold foil way!!!

Thanks Mike King