About Us
Box Line Technology is not an equipment manufacturing company, our expertise is in product development and product application.
Our staff have been involved with lithographic cold foil applcation for some 10 years from the infancy of the commercial application. During this period considerable expertise has been built up in the use of different types of foil with different adhesives, both conventional and UV combined with different inks and various blankets, each of which have an important place in the overall production. It has been established that different foils react differently with different adhesives whilst the correct type of printing blanket to suit both has a marked effect on the overall result, especially for foiled half tones and fine details. Initially UV inks proved difficult for overprinting cold foil and considerable work has been done to solve this problem to ensure that the foil is properly adhered to the substrate and the ink properly adhered to the foil to produce a superb value added product. Cold foil is laid onto the substrate as opposed to stamped in as with hot stamping, the resultant product having the surface of the particular substrate, however with correct processing cold foil can achieve the brilliance of hot foil on all types of substrate. An added advantage is that if a textured substrate is used, the resultant foil surface with be equally textured giving a brand new effect not possible with hot stamping. This process also looks almost the same as the very old process of "Bronzing", also not possible with hot stamping.
During the same development period the process of in-line UV film casting, also known as Cast & Cure, has been perfected to give holographic images in the printed surface by a very low cost process using re-usable consumables. It is also possible to do this process off line and in both cases to produce spectacular holographic effects to enhance any printed product. Cold foil and cast & cure used together produce absolutley stunning finishes not possible with other application techniques and with low cost.
Hot foil stamping is now a mature market and the latest development have been with the application techniques as opposed to materials required. The market is moving for hot foil stamping to the more specialised longer run large step and repeat processes and specilised applications. The security aspects of registered holograms by hot stamping remains a very important part of this application technique and continues to be a growth area. Box Line Technology have more than 20 years experience of this market.
Another principal area of operation for the company is the provision of turn key instalations of the equipment to produce hot foil stamping and embossing dies from magnesium, still the most popular material from which to produce acurate low cost dies, zinc, copper and steel.
Every area of the company's activity has the same theme of expert application knowledge which is the bedrock of the business and our customer insurance for the future. Please see our "Application Techniques" pages or contact us for further details.