Special documents like diplomas, certificates, and legal documents warrant an official seal to authenticate the document. There are 5 types of seals.

1. You can emboss a seal directly on the paper with an embosser.
2. You can emboss on a self-adhesive foil wafer and then apply the wafer to the document.
3. You can apply a factory pre-embossed foil wafer seal. It can be a stock seal available in small quantities, or a custom seal made with your design.
4. You can have the paper pre-printed in a factory with the foil seal hot stamped on it already. Foiled headers can also be done at the same time. (See www.makecustomdiplomas.com)
5. Where the quantity needed is low, you can print the seal on a self-adhesive, laser-printable foil wafer. The image is flat and not raised, so no embosser is required.

	Stock pre-embossed foil seals Stock Foil Seals Certificate seals: Pre-embossed gold and silver foil and Printable seals
	Custom Pre-embossed Foil Seals Anniversary Seals, Thank You Seals, Made-in-America Seals, & Holiday Seals Custom Seals in gold, silver, or bronze foil
	Embossers Gold, silver, bronze, red, green, or blue blank foil seals for use with embossers Look at available stock centers for embossers Seal Layout Form Making a good embosser (pdf) Choosing the right embosser (pdf)
	Laser printer printable foil seals in gold or silver

The Embosser

An electronic image file is sent to a laser that engraves a positive and negative die. On the positive die the white or un-embossed part of the image is burned away leaving the black part of the image raised. Then the negative die is lasered and the black or raised part is burned away leaving the image as a depression in the die. On the negative die the black image has slightly wider and deeper cuts than the raised image on the positive die, so there is room for the paper. The two dies are lined up and attached to a die holder, which slips in and out of the embosser body. You can get several dies on die holders and switch to change the image. Thus one embosser can emboss different images by swapping the dies. The dies are interchangeable between in embossers that are the same manufacturer and throat. The throat is the maximum distance from the center of the image to the edge of the paper. The hand of the embosser is the direction the paper is inserted. If the embosser comes up from the bottom then the hand is bottom. Bottom is the default. You must specify the hand at the time of order and it is not adjustable.

Embossers are designed to emboss light text-weight papers. A 20-pound text is usable but 28 pound and above can cause problems. The thicker the paper the harder it is to emboss. The negative die needs to be cut deeper and wider to allow for thicker paper and there are severe limits on paper thickness. Paper does not stretch and embossing often causes micro fractures in the embossed image. Foil wafers on the other hand are more elastic so it does not micro fracture like paper.

One secret of getting a good image is in preparing the artwork. The electronic art file should be either a vector graphic or a 600 dpi tiff file at the finished size (a 2" inch seal @ 600 dpi is 1200 X 1200 pixels). The image should be black and white only (no colors or grays). The most common mistakes in preparing your image file are:

1. Mistaking a dark gray for black
2. Having too low a resolution
3. Not using an actual vector art file
4. And failing to outline the fonts, making them a part of the graphic and not referenced to a font on your computer.

If you use Photoshop, you should save it as a 600 dpi tiff file. Photoshop’s .eps is not a true vector graphic and does not work properly. If you use illustrator or another real vector art program and save it as an esp. Be sure to outline the fonts used first The image file should contain bold fonts without fine lines and images with out fine detail. Embossers cannot hold fine detail in the image. Typically an embosser would have text in a circle between an outer and inner circle and a graphic in the center.

Another consideration must be considered if foil wafers are used. Most wafer manufacturer measure the size from point tip to point tip through the diameter. If you have a 2-inch seal and a 2-inch image die then the image will go out to the tip of the points on each side. A 1 3/4 or 1 /5/8 inch embosser fits better on a 2 inch embosser die 2 inch seal are available in a wide variety including metallic gold, metallic silver, metallic bronze, metallic red, metallic green, and metallic blue. If you need a 2 1/4 or a 2 1/2 inch seal you choice are far less and they are harder to find and more expensive.

Pre-embossed foil seals

An alternative to using an embosser is to buy pre-embossed seals. These seals are embossed in a factory so all are perfectly centered and even. You peal them off a roll and apply them to the paper. Besides being perfect and ready to use, they can have background ink in the lowlands making them look far more professional than what you get from your embosser. You can get them in gold, silver or bronze foil in 170 sizes and shapes.

Stock pre-embossed seals are made in quantity and packaged is small quantities. They espouse values without reference to any particular institution. For example "Academic Excellence" without referencing any particular school. They offer the advantage of being available off the shelf with no production time and are available in small quantities.

Custom pre-embossed seals are made up to order and are personalized with a customers information and / or artwork. They are available in multiples of 1,000 and can come on rolls or individual sheets. In addition to the fact that they are all perfect and not subject to the misalignment of loose wafers in a manually operated machine. They are made in a factory and can hold more fine detail than can be achieve with a manual embosser used in the field. You can have them embossed only, embossed with a similar tinted background ink, or with a contracting ink (like dark blue ink on a gold foil) There are 16 stock ink colors available at no additional cost. With a surcharge you can get Pantone ink colors. It is possible to get up to 4 different background inks as long as the inks have a 2 pixel wide embossed area as a dike to keep the ink separate. Inks can only flood the lowlands and you can't ink a raised area, but you can also de-boss or press down an image. That depressed image can be inked.

Laser Printed foil seals

Where only a few are needed the cost of an embosser or pre-embossed seals can be prohibitive. There are sheets of laser printable gold and silver foil wafers available in a few sizes. They can be printed on a laser printer.



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Last modified : by John F. Bousquet, CML, {owner JFB Desktop Publishing}