Greetings fellow users, has been a while since i have done one of these finished creations showoffs.
Today i wanted to greet you all with some Homemade security stickers for some high value packages that i ship to clients. These are done by relief-style printing (akin to Flexography and Newsprint, with a soft substrate). First a monochrome master is engraved onto a natural rubber polymer. These have the best dimensional stability -to- melting point ratio and can reliably stamp dots as small as 40 microns with a proper inking system (which i won’t go into).
The engraved polymer is then inked and pressed with a hydraulic press onto paper to leave the imprint. 800 kPa is the (from my experience) recommended press pressure.
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Laser used : 5 Watt, 355Nm UV ComMarker
Gravure size : 8x6 cm
Interval: 0.007mm
Speed: 240 mm/s (2x 0-degree pass, 2x 90-degree pass)
40Khz@1ns
Above on the left is the engraved rubber polymer. It is not clean in this shot since it has been used a few times.
The illustration of Ben Franklin has been hand re-drawn by me. Below a size comparison with the original work. Ofc the original work is based on the Og design from the banknote bill, but the reference was the actual portrait so the shading is not done as a copy paste.
And of course the overall sticker design below. Colors inspired by the infamous Del Monte Bananas, banknote misprint
Inks used : MFL Process Yellow Lithographic ink
Cranfield Warm Red classic Relief ink
Shade on the portrait is a secret recipe
Forest Green for the Lettering + logo
This will also be printed in Intaglio style once i do some tests of Copper vs Photosensitive Polymers