Quality of both acrylic and metal stamps mainly depends in client artwork and their understanding on what they are ordering and how to use it. This page will provide some guideline on improving artwork before submitting it to production by Laser-CutZ

There are 3 main parts that need to be taken into consideration when ordering soap stamps.

1. Colors
2. Thin Lines
3. Text Size

Those are 3 categories that have most of the problems when artwork is submitted for production of hard stamps.
COLORS
Our stamps are fabricated by using laser engraving, which means laser machine remove material off acrylic and keep the section of material where we had and artwork, as result stamp elevation is build. Stamps do NOT have color or shades, this means stamp is single color.

If color artwork is submitted it is not good for production and artwork processing is needed.  For example, image below shows partial artwork submitted by the client. Image like this cannot be laser cut directly.

Such artwork needs to be converted to a single color. For easier interpretation we use black color as main color for laser cut soap stamps.  If artwork is processed to black you will see something like image below. Shape of lotus flower still recognizable but not as good as it was when color where present.  Aside from visual look this black shape will be big solid body to press. So if the stamp is fairly large user will need to apply big amount of pressure to emboss the artwork to the body of the soap. Such artwork will not be too goo either (this is up to the client to decide if they would want solid body silhouette)

What we recommend is to create outline walls of the object that will provide enough graphical information to recognize brand identity, logo or any other image and at the same time avoid large solid body objects that are hard to press. Below is the example of how original artwork should have been submitted in order to create perfect soap stamp.

Photo below shows how customer stamp came out when it was fabricated on laser machine with the artwork described above.

Stamp Margins (Dead Space)

When submitting stamp, many clients give extra margins around their artwork, very often stamp size we get is the size of the soap. So for example of the soap bar is 2×2” (50x50mm) the soap stamp dimensions given by the client are 2×2” and artworks is in the middle. This is WRONG. This is wrong way to submit artwork because there will be lots of extra wasted space around the artwork, and that space is  not utilized, but to cut that space more laser power is needed and as laser heats up quality if the stamp is degraded.

To keep stamps good and crisp we need to remove unneeded dead space around artwork and send us only the artwork that is need for production.  If artwork is sent to us with dead space we will readjust stamp size to remove it.

Photo above shows how artwork margins should be represented, outer rectangle is a cut line for the stamp body.