Production of plastic cards: from layout to terminal

If your business requires plastic cards - production in Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkov (the choice of city does not matter much), it will not hurt you to familiarize yourself with the basics of their production. Below we describe how to reliably protect a card, create the correct layout and not make a mistake in choosing a printing technology.

Printing plastic cards is a rather complex process. The problem is not even in getting the image clear, but in fixing it, since polyvinyl chloride does not absorb paint. There are several technologies for producing cards, many of which can be ordered from the Wolf printing house.

The production of plastic cards begins with preparing the layout. It can be produced by a customer, a designer or a group of independent specialists through the Wolf Print Design Exchange. The advantage of the latter method is that for the price of one layout the client receives an unlimited number of proposals and ideas. Since the quality of the picture on the card depends on the chosen layout, professionals comply with all the requirements for such orders (if desired, they can be specified by filling out a brief on the Wolf printing house website).

Production of discount cards for small circulations is most often occurs using the sublimation method.

When it comes to large print runs, digital printing is used:

Inkjet printing is a technology that requires serious work on fine-tuning the equipment.

Printing on digital machines on plastic (with a special coating) - the possibility of personalization is provided even at the stage of creating cards and the process is high speed.

Offset printing with lamination is the most common method of producing plastic cards . The technology provides high speed and high-quality images. Most often, the drawing is applied using UV paints, followed by lamination of the plastic. After cutting, the cards are sent for personalization.

Silk-screen printing - used if you need to create the effect of gilding or silvering (offset “gold” does not give this effect).

Additional elements

Depending on the purpose of the card, the set of protective elements changes:

• Magnetic strip - makes it suitable for use in reading devices and ATMs
• The signature stripe is an effective security element, since when you try to erase the inscription, the structure of the stripe pattern is broken.
• Scratch stripe - widely used in cards for paying for services, contains secret information that can be seen by rubbing the opaque protective layer with the edge of a coin.
• Hologram - anti-counterfeit protection, pressed onto the card at high temperature. Foil embossing, which cannot be copied, is applied using the hot embossing method.
• Microcircuit (chip) is a carrier with a large amount of information, protects against falsification.