In the wide world of promotional products I’ve heard that few things can be more daunting to order than name badges. After spending the past five years writing orders and helping to produce them I can agree that there are often more tiny details than people initially realize and it can be overwhelming. One of the more confusing parts is often knowing which types of plastics are used for different printing and personalization methods.
The most common type of plastic is called 2-ply plastic. 2-ply plastic is usually 1/16″ thick and is made of two different colored layers of plastic. The bottom layer, often called the “core” is the thicker of the two. This layer is only seen when the badge is engraved or if you flip it over to look at the back. The top layer is thinner than the core and is usually called the “surface color”.
2-ply Plastic Badge (Chicago Badge)
In conversation and in catalogs the surface color is usually state before the core color. For example, “White over Black” or “White/Black” means that the top of the badge is white and when engraved, the names would show as black. Most of our name badges are done on a satin finish 2-ply plastic though matte colors (that have less of a gloss to the surface color) are sometimes available.
1/16" 2-ply White/Black plastic
Related to the 2-ply plastics are the laserable plastics and 3-ply plastics. Laserable 2-ply plastics are still made of the two layers but in this case the surface color is much thinner than with regular 2-ply plastics. This is because the laser doesn’t cut a deeply as the rotary engraver does. 3-ply plastics are exactly what they sound like. They have a surface color, a core color and then another layer of the surface color on the opposite side. You’ve probably seen many desk plates like this that are black with white engraving on each side. People often use 3-ply plastics for just that purpose.
For digitally printed name badges we mostly use a 1/16″ thick solid white styrene. It’s a bright white plastic that works well with our digital printing process. Typically we don’t engrave on this styrene as the names are done digitally as well.
Digital Badge (Phoenix Badge)
One final type of plastic that we often use is 1/16th clear acrylic. This “plastic” is used for both name badges and desk plates and allows for a few more options with the screen printing. Both the logo and a background color are reverse printed on the back of the acrylic. After that the personalizations are reverse rotary engraved as well and then the engraving is colorfilled with a stock or PMS ink color. The final step is a protective cover that is placed on the back of the badge to protect the ink and engraving.
Acrylic Badge (Austin Badge)
There are a multitude of other types of plastics and sub categories within each but these few tend to be the most common in regards to name badge and name plates. Hopefully this helped to make your name badge experience a little less confusing!
(photos by Juliette)
Tags: acyrlic, badge, digital, engrave, engraving, name badge, name tag, plastic, print, styrene
[...] ago I decided to share this awesome plastic knowledge with my fellow industry folks and wrote up a blog post about the different types that we use to make name badges. It’s a handy quick reference guide if you’ve ever wondered or needed to know what types of [...]