When Die Striking Alone Won’t Cut It
By now, you probably know all about our process when it comes to creating your coins. For the vast majority of our orders, the coins are struck, plated and then color is added. However, this isn’t the only option available, and for a select few of our orders, a different set of steps are added in order to bring a design to life.
All of our coins are still created via the die striking or die casting method, but when it comes to adding color and images to certain designs, some of our customers choose to go with either offset printing or silk screen printing certain design elements onto their coins. With our standard challenge coins, the addition of color requires separated, recessed levels that can contain the enamel paint and keep the colors from bleeding together. If your design is too detailed to make use of those design elements, then adding offset printing or silk screen printing to your coins is the only way to go.
The Difference Between Offset Printing and Silk Screen Printing
When you incorporate offset printing into your challenge coin design, you benefit from increased detail. This is because the printing method can be used to transfer a photographic image directly onto your coins. Unlike with other methods, the ink is not added directly to your coin with offset printing. Instead, photo prints are created on a rubber blanket and then rolled onto the molded coins. The image is then coated in epoxy to protect it well into the future.
With silk screen printing, instead of printing out the image and applying it directly to the coin, colors are added to the coin in layers after being pressed through a fine mesh screen. A stencil is formed by blocking off parts of the screen in the negative image of the design to be printed. That way, once paint is pushed through the screen, it only shows up in the places and the design intended. Paint in one color is added to the screen and run across the stencil onto the coin. Then, a new stencil is created with a new section blocked off, a new color added, and run across the stencil. And so on until the intended image is complete.
Silk screen printing is the perfect option for designs with fine details that can’t be captured through the regular die casting or die striking process, but that also aren’t coming from a picture available for offset printing.
Coins Making Use of Silk Screen Printing
The primary difference you’ll see in coins that make use of silk screen printing as opposed to those using offset printing is that the sections being screen printed are so much smaller. While offset printing is used to create fine detail over a large area of a coin face, silk screen is used to add small, fine details.
For this coin from the Fuerza Aérea Colombiana (Colombian Air Force), you’d be hard pressed to spot which aspects of it were created via silk screen. In truth, the entire coin was created through the standard die striking and soft enamel process. But on the reverse coin face, you’ll notice the different unit emblems around the number 43. If you’re thinking that those emblems are the aspect of the coin created through silk screen, you’re wrong but getting a lot closer. At the bottom of each emblem is a small banner displaying the unit name. It’s these banners that were created through silk screen printing.
This goes to show you just how detailed we’re capable of getting with silk screen printing. Because traditional soft and hard enamel coins require individual metal strokes to separate each individual colorfill area, the tiny words on the banners would be impossible to create through traditional methods. But silk screening doesn’t have to be reserved for tiny details.
This Marine Corps coin offers a larger section of silk screen printing compared to the Colombian Air Force coin. You’d think the emblems on the back of this coin might make use of the printing technique, but it’s actually the lovely lady on the coin’s obverse face that was added through a silk screen.
Our coin minting process is more than detailed enough to create a human figure or silhouette in a clear and obvious fashion. But the customer had very unique specifications, and they asked that there be no metal strokes separating the different colors creating the design. In order to get that seamless look and feel, we had to use silk screen printing.;
Choosing the Right Direction For Your Coins
Silk screen printing gets its name from its origins in China during the Song Dynasty. Back then, the fine mesh screens through which the pigment was forced to create the designs were made out of silk. Today, as with most things, the process has largely been automated, and machines do a lot of the hard work. However, the effects the process can have on a set of challenge coins is undeniable.
When deciding which way to go with your own set of challenge coins, whether to make use of offset or silk screen printing options will depend on a few factors. First, does your challenge coin design feature images with fine details that can’t be captured in the traditional manner? Keep in mind that faces aren’t captured in the same level of detail with 2D or 3D coins as they can be in photographs. Therefore, offset printing is the best way to go for coins meant to honor or represent specific people.;
From there, ask whether your coin design features small, fine details for which even an offset printed image would be insufficient. As you take each of these points into consideration, whether to use offset printing, silk screen printing or the standard die striking and colorfill method in the creation of your coins should become clearer.
