Choosing The Best Card Material

CARD PRODUCTION

Understanding card production will help you make decisions.

Most event cards are printed digitally when 5,000 cards or under. This also helps with different versions as we do not have to change printing plates. However, large runs are printed litho using either PMS or CMYK. Do you often have numerous versions/templates? Do you require PMS colors? Security features required? These are a few questions that will need to be answered to guide you.

Inkjet cards are built differently than PVC cards. The matrials used can be matte or gloss. The difference in the materials dictate the print quality, water resistence and type of printer you can use. Understanding how long the card will need to last, how it will be stored or used and if preprinting is required will help us determine what materials to use. You have a seat at the manufacturing table, let us know!

Both inkjet and PVC cards come with lamination options to protect preprinting, holograms or security inks. In addition to protecting these elements, lamination allows you to print over features such as a hologram or invisible ink. Also, the static printing becomes waterproof. The one caveat to this is the matte inkjet card. This particular card contains no laminate on it so stock cannot be preprinted but this stock is much more waterproof than the gloss inkjet material with laminate - just no option to have preprinting done at our facility. 

Depending on the card type chosen, we will use one of two different die cutting processes. Match Die's are incredibly expensive whereas PMC is not. Making a custom size is less costly using PMC. With PMC there is often one side sharper than the other. This isn't noticeable when looking at the card and in most cases, will not hurt printing. It is ideal, however, to let us know what side you will be printing large solids, edge-to-edge on. We can package the cards or print faint images on the side that is cut to better accept the edge-to-edge print.

Most events require visible features (hologram, OVI, etc.) or invisible features (Invisible ink, AG Mark, etc.). It is often recommended to blend a visible feature with an invisible feature. What a counterfeiter can see will be attacked and replicated first. Balance visible with invisible. We do offer secure design as well if needed and are happy to guide you on best practice for your event needs.

Our production machinery goes fast. The slowest we can run this machine is 12,000 cards per hour depending on size. We often print inventory or sequential numbering on cards. This helps you keep track of issuance and inventory. Additionally, we can print barcodes or RFID data onto the cards. Let us help you with all the data imaging that doesn't need to be done on-site.

Based on card size and data location, we may choose to print the data variably on press or via card printer.