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Month: March 2016

Get to Know Your Nameplate Substrate: Vinyl

Previously, we blogged about a few of the substrates available for your next nameplate. While this material the materials we’ve already covered are great for some applications, there are plenty of other substrates to explore, and we are going to continue on with our series with vinyl.

Nameplates in general provide decorate, informative solutions that enhance your product, while offering quick turnaround time without sacrificing quality. Nameplate production includes labels and overlays that don’t require embossing or extensive engineering. Compared to graphic overlays, nameplates offer faster production and lower pricing with high quality and consistency always in mind.

At Hallmark Nameplate, vinyl is:

  • Available in rigid and flexible
  • Available in thicknesses from .004” to .030”
  • Available in gloss or matte finishes
  • Suitable for indoor application
  • Suitable for outdoor applications with a UV over laminate

Vinyl product decals and warning labels are perhaps the most effective and economical method of producing identification graphics. Vinyl nameplates are flexible, and can be used with both indoor and outdoor applications. It also adheres very well to a variety of different surfaces and textures, including concave and convex surfaces. Vinyl allows for a wide variety of finishes and thickness ranges, which allows for plenty of options. Typically, durability ranges from between two and seven years, and is dependent on many factors. Vinyl may tear, however, when stressed, and is not as resistant to chemicals as other nameplate substrates.

Common uses for vinyl products include company logos, warning decals, and equipment asset tags. Hallmark Nameplate offers vinyl substrate nameplates for cost-effective applications that require flexibility in specific thickness and finishes. They’re an excellent material for a variety of indoor uses, or outside with a UV over-laminate, which is also available if you’re looking for something more resistant to ultraviolet rays. Hallmark Nameplate ensures color matching, and our vinyl nameplates are available in every hue imaginable. They’re also available in thickness ranging from .004” to .030”, with gloss or matte finishes.

Vinyl has many uses and applications. It is most often used to promote a company’s logo, a special promotion, event, team, or school. Since vinyl is very flexible as well as a portable material, you could see a vinyl banner just about anywhere, such as billboards, table banners, trade show banners, building banners, street banners, festival banners, as well as stadium flags.

Considering our facility gives us the ability to offer screen and digital printing, let’s review both of those processes briefly.

Digitally-printed vinyl is printed with aqueous (water-based), eco-solvent, solvent-based inks or UV-curable inkjet inks. The latter three types tend to contain durable pigments, which provide superior weather and UV-fading resistance. Large format inkjet printers are usually used. Very large vinyl products may be produced using “grand format inkjet printers” of >2.5m width, or computer-controlled airbrush devices which print the ink directly onto the material. Some of the fastest wide and grand format inkjet printers are capable of printing up to 3,000 square feet per hour.

Vinyl nameplates can also be produced using screen printing, in which different colors are laid down one at a time using screens comprising an imaged stencil, through which the screen printing ink passes. Screen printing may be done on hand benches, single / dual color machines, or on high-performance multi-color screen presses.

Vinyl is one of the many substrates available for your new nameplate to be printed on. At Hallmark Nameplate, we take into consideration every variable to suit your specific needs, and being so versatile, vinyl just might be the one for you. Some variables we will take into consideration include:

  • The type of surface it will be mounted to
  • Indoor or Outdoor application
  • Type of Finish; Gloss, Velvet or Matte
  • Serialization & barcodes
  • Display windows (LED, LCD)
  • Drawings and art files available
  • Domed elements
  • UL or CSA requirements

We have more than 55 years of experience to work with, so when it is time to start your next project, we at Hallmark Nameplate will be able to walk you through the entire development process, eliminating any concern you may have. From your first inquiry to the finished product in your hands, we are here to ensure that you have the right nameplate substrate for your specific needs and applications.

Membrane Switch Construction Elements

We at Hallmark Nameplate are notorious for producing the highest quality products and using our experience and knowledge in the technology field to the utmost. We keep not just our products, but also our customers, at the top of our priority list when it comes to the task at hand, and membrane switch production is no exception. We’re fully equipped to assist with every step along the way, allowing you to rest easy knowing that your upcoming product is in great hands.

At Hallmark Nameplate, we are proud to offer membrane switches, featuring a robust construction which is completely sealed from the outside environment. We manufacture membrane switches in both tactile and non-tactile variations, which support a wide variety of designs and applications. Non-tactile switches are more robust, completely sealed from the external environment, and are capable of more than five million applications. Tactile switch types, on the other hand, are internally vented for a complete seal, available in SS dome, polydome, and hydro form dome constructions. They are also capable of more than one million actuations.

Membrane switches are non-standard, which means that each one is specially designed for your product specifications. This is ideal for medical equipment, computer peripherals, and even the military and aerospace industries. This allows a user interface with equipment while protecting the machinery from contaminants, environmental hazards, and debris.

Ultimately, there are three types of membrane switch construction elements: conductive silver, copper flex, and PCB-based.

Conductive Silver
Silver flex membrane switches are the most common construction for flexible, custom membrane switches. It’s also the most popular switch construction due to its affordability, especially when compared to bulky, costly electromechanical switch assemblies. Silver flex membrane switches feature very thin, flexible layers of material, of which some layers use screen printed silver and carbon conductive links, and are separated by an adhesive layer. Conductive silver can be used for tactile and non-tactile construction. It’s also great for LEDs and resistors. A great advantage of using conductive silver is that they’re lead-free. Cure temperatures are much lower than some other elements. Conductive silver also works very well for steady state temperature environments, particularly at extreme temperatures. Extremely thin construction makes conductive silver great for saving precious design space on your membrane switch. It can also be easily cleaned.

Copper Flex
Copper flex membrane switch panels are made by laminating a very thin sheet of copper to a flexible film substrate, and then chemically etched away. Copper traces are left as a result. Copper flex has the ability to provide higher density traces. It also has SMT low-profile components and is available for tactile and non-tactile construction. Copper flex membrane switches are ideal for smaller designs, where dense circuit patterns or trace routing limitations exist. The design also allows the ability to accommodate more complex circuit patterns while still maintaining the flexibility of a membrane switch. The copper flex keypads also have the advantage of being able to hard solder active and passive components into the assembly, making it a great choice in high-vibration, high-reliability environments.

PCB Based
A PCB (aka print circuit board) is typically made of copper-clad fiber infused into a resin material. The PCB membrane switch construction uses a PCB as the main structure or support substrate, with the membrane switch on the front of the PCB assembly, and the display, along with any other discrete components, on the back side of the PCB PCB Based membrane switches are available in tactile, non-tactile, and capacitive switches. They are also versatile in that they can be single sided, double sided, or multilayered in construction. PCB Based membrane switches also allow for multiple connector options.

Membrane switches from Hallmark Nameplate can be specifically designed to meet your environmental considerations. Our switches are internally vented and sealed to protect your equipment from contaminants. Hallmark Nameplate’s membrane switches can also be provided with or without terminating connectors as well as:

  • LED Indicator Lights
  • Backlight (LED, fiber optic, EL)
  • Chemical and Weather resistant
  • ESD/EMI/RFI Shielding
  • Various connector configurations

Contact us at Hallmark Nameplate today to learn more about the various constructions and product features we can offer, and learn how we can customize your membrane switch to meet and exceed your unique application requirements. With our experience and our long history of producing high-quality products for various needs, you can rely on Hallmark Nameplate to deliver what you need and beyond, and complete the job efficiently.

Safety and Technology at Hallmark Nameplate

You’ve heard (and seen) plenty of statements regarding Hallmark Nameplate’s dedication to quality, service, and reliability when it comes to products and services. But the safety measures we take in order to maintain such high standards play a major role in our ability to please our customers and keep our employees feeling great about getting the job done. We inspect every single item before it is shipped to our customers, and we measure with not just the human eye, but with data-driven computer feedback as well. Keeping our products and production floor as safe as possible is more than just careful inspection, however, and today we’re here to educate you on what could happen during production, and all the measures we take to counteract any risk.

Hallmark Nameplate maintains a state of the art electrostatic discharge safe environment, which is designed to prevent both human body electrical discharges, and charged device discharges which could impact or otherwise destroy delicate electronic components.

In addition to ESD-safe workstations, Hallmark Nameplate maintains a complete ESD-Safe production environment to ensure that components remain safe from the time they are unpacked until they are finished and safely packaged for shipment. Hallmark Nameplate keeps your products and safety in mind, just as much as they care for the well being of their employees, equipment, and professionalism.

Hallmark Nameplate’s capabilities include surface mount placement of a wide variety of component types utilizing two independent lines; through-hole component placement using the state of the art wave solder equipment; through-hole component placement using programmable selective soldering systems; programming components and ICT (In-Circuit Test) using an SPEA 3030 parallel multisite test system.

Selective wave soldering is the process of selectively soldering components to printed circuit boards and molded modules that could be damaged by the heat of a reflow oven in a traditional surface-mount technology assembly process. This usually follows an SMT oven reflow process; parts to be selectively soldered are usually surrounded by parts that have been previously soldered in a surface-mount reflow process, and the selective-solder process must be sufficiently precise to avoid damaging them.

The In-Circuit Test is an example of white box testing where an electrical probe tests a populated printed circuit board, checking for shorts, opens, resistance, capacitance, and other basic quantities which will show whether the assembly was correctly fabricated. It may be performed with a bed of nails type test fixture and specialist test fixture and special test equipment, or with a fixtureless in-circuit test setup.

A bed of nails tester is a traditional electronic test fixture which has numerous pins inserted into holes in an epoxy phenolic glass cloth laminated sheet which are aligned using tooling pins to make contact with test points on a printed circuit board and are also connected to a measuring unit by wires.

As with all Hallmark Nameplate products, we perform 100 percent visual inspection on all electrical assemblies. Making sure that you are receiving the highest quality and safest products in the industry because our customers are our top priority. We take great pride in our products, experience in the industry, and the customers that support Hallmark Nameplate.

We offer Auto Optical Inspection (AOI) as well as X-ray testing with state of the art equipment to inspect each and every circuit board and ball-grid array, offering capabilities in placing and inspecting micro-BGA’s. The need for automated inspection exists in all PCB assembly processes where high quality and safety standards apply. Hallmark Nameplate’s AOI system provides maximum inspection coverage and measured feedback.

Our safety precautions most certainly show in the quality of our products, which we take very seriously as an established business. Our commitment to quality management sets us apart from our competitors. Hallmark Nameplate invites you to continue working with us to see the benefits of our all-around commitment to quality, safety, and technology.