Flattened characters when tipping raised letters or beads.

Die too hot, too much pressure on die or excessive dwell time.

Lower heater setting or head pressure. Reduce dwell timer setting.

Distorted imprint on plastic part.

Skidding of die on contact with foil due to fixture deflection.

Realign die on head slide so that it is directly under the press ram. Modify or redesign fixture.

Blurred image or imprint.

Excessive die heat.

Reduce heater temperature.

Weak impression or no imprint.

Insufficient air pressure.

Check for obstruction in air line or replace with larger air line.

Inconsistent transfer of decoration to the parts.

Variation in parts (thickness, sink marks, warpage).

Modify heat, pressure, dwell time settings to optimize for parts from all mold cavities.

Heat variation at die face.

Check that heat control is holding to pre-set tolerances. Look for air gaps between heater block and die dove-tail due to die shim, or heat loss due to riser block.

Decoration fails to adhere to plastic.

Insufficient cure time.

Allow for longer cure time procedure.

Strip delay.

Manually lay a section of foil on the part, cycle the press and peel the foil off. If the imprint is good, stripping must be adjusted, either by reducing head up-stroke speed or adjusting stripper bar springs.

Air trapped under foil.

Check foil feed & die contact with foil to determine cause

Contamination on part.

Determine contaminant, its source and eliminate.

Wrong foil used.

Check compatibility of foil, replace with correct foil.

Special coating on plastic.

Determine coating and change to a foil that is properly formulated.

Imprint deeper on one end of part.

Machine not level.

Level machine and mount die directly under arm.

Flaking in decoration, feathery edges or fill in.

Dwell time is too long.

Shorten dwell time by adjusting air flow control valves.

Loss of gloss in foil.

Dwell time is too long.

Shorten dwell time by adjusting air flow control valves.

Inconsistent imprints in multiple part set-ups.

Part irregularities (sinks, thickness variations).

Shim the fixtures to compensate for part irregularities.

Inconsistent transfer of decoration to the parts

Die temperature is too low or there is inadequate pressure.

If die impresses the plastic, increase die temperature. If imprint does not impress plastic, boost pressure on the die.

Dwell time is too short.

Lengthen dwell time by adjusting air flow control valves.

Off-spec foil.

Manually place a section of foil from a roll that has run well on a part and cycle the press. If it prints well, replace the roll on the machine.

Uneven imprint.

Unevenly heated die. Die head is off-center, fixture may have shifted.

Check die temperature, look for cartridge heater outage. Determine why die head shifted. Reset & realign as needed.

Repeated void in decoration at same location.

Molded-in feature is unsupported by fixture (rib or boss).

Shim or modify fixture.