Embossed and formed features add dimension to a flat part, so the information stays legible many years after harsh environments wear off any printed image. Formed in-house alongside printing and fabrication, with no tooling fee on our own equipment.
Embossing produces raised or sunken characters and designs in the material itself, using matched male and female dies. Nothing is printed and nothing is applied, so there is no ink film to wear away.
That is why it is specified for serial numbers and rating data on equipment that gets washed down, sand-blasted by its own working environment, or simply left outdoors for decades. Long after a printed legend has gone, an embossed one can still be read — and in many cases felt.
The second reason to emboss has nothing to do with durability. Raising a button area on a graphic overlay gives the operator something to find without looking at the panel.
On equipment operated with gloves on, in poor light, or while the operator is watching something else, that tactile edge is the difference between a panel that works in the field and one that only works on the bench. We emboss polyester and polycarbonate overlay faces for exactly this.
Forming uses compression, tension, or shear to deform material into the shape you need. Nothing is cut away — the metal is displaced. Press brake bending is done to your specifications, and rigid plates can be roll-formed to conform to curved surfaces.
Roll forming passes a strip of metal through consecutive sets of rolls, each adding an incremental part of the bend until the finished cross-section is reached. It suits parts with long lengths or high quantities, where a single press operation would not hold the profile consistently.
A plate that has to wrap a cylinder, a bracket that has to sit flush against a casting, or an overlay that has to follow a curved console all get resolved here, against the same drawing that carries the artwork.
If your part is thicker than .032″, the identification can still carry raised characters — it is usually resolved by embossing a thinner plate and mounting it, or by etching the thicker stock instead.
Most embossed parts are printed too. The legend that has to survive gets embossed; the color, branding, and secondary information get printed.
Because we print and form under one roof, an embossed serial field can sit beside screen-printed text and register correctly to it. When those operations sit with two suppliers, registration between a printed legend and a formed feature is exactly what goes wrong. See screen printing and punching, machining, and forming.
If you do not have all of that yet, send what you have and call 319-895-8804. Customer service is open 8:00 AM–4:30 PM CST Monday through Thursday and 7:00 AM–3:30 PM CST Friday, and you will always reach someone in person.
Two things decide whether an embossed legend still works in five years: character height and emboss depth. Characters that are too small lose definition as the die wears and as paint or contamination fills the relief. Characters that are too deep on thin stock distort the back face of the part, which matters when the plate mounts flat against a casting.
We will recommend both against your material and thickness. If the plate is being read by a person at arm’s length in poor light, that is a different specification from one being read by an inspector with the part in hand, and it is worth saying which you have.
Embossed characters can also be paint-filled or the raised faces wiped to leave color in the background, giving contrast that survives longer than a printed legend on the same plate.
Embossing and forming pair with punching, machining, and forming for holes and heavier bends, die and digital cutting for the finished outline, and screen printing or digital printing for the graphics. For marking that survives without raised characters, see metal etching and Metalphoto processing.
We offer free quotes on all embossing & forming orders. Send the drawing, artwork, quantities, application, and timing you have today — our art department turns a blueprint into a press-ready proof, and we will tell you what is still open.
Most jobs finish 7–10 days after the proof is approved. Rush orders can be produced in 3–5 business days for an additional fee. Orders ship within a 10% over/under quantity standard.
Request a Quote or call 319-895-8804 and you will reach someone in person.
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