When you’ve made the investment in equipment to create your own hot foil designs, you’ll want to keep it in optimum condition. Regular cleaning and servicing is the key to maintaining your hot foil machine, but there are some tips and tricks that you should be aware of.
Cleaning the hot foil machine
Cleaning the main body of the press requires no specialist liquids or solutions; all you need is normal household furniture polish. Simply spray onto a soft cloth (not onto the press itself) and gently wipe away any grime or foil dust. For the moving parts, 3in1 oil is ideal, but use sparingly as excessive amounts tend to make a lot of mess.
Keeping dies clean, especially magnesium and copper foiling dies, is essential.
For magnesium dies we recommend using a soft show brush to remove paper debris. Any other method can round the edges on the block and make letters appear less sharp.
Copper dies, being made of stronger metal, need a slightly harsher clean. We recommend a glass fibre brush to remove any small imperfections on the surface of the die. This will help to ensure that your foil finish is consistently high-quality.
Finally for brass dies, you can use a brass cleaning brush to safely clean, polish and deburr without any risk of damage. It can also be safely used to clean circuit boards and any other electrostatic devices.
Regular checks and servicing
You should check at least every six months that the toggle links and foil feed parts on your machine are tight.
Beyond that, it is recommended to have your hot foil machine professionally serviced at regular intervals to maintain its productivity and minimise faults.
A service typically involves:
- Replacing the main gearbox oil
- Replacing oil filters
- Checking for wear on the mechanical moving parts
- Cleaning the press whilst checking the mechanical moving parts
Regular servicing will not only minimise breakdowns and keep your press in top running order, but also helps you to maintain productivity and increase efficiency. A properly maintained and serviced hot foil machine can actually improve foiling standards, so it’s well worth the investment – after all, downtime due to breakdowns could prove to be much more costly.
Metallic Elephant can carry out repairs and services on site but it’s preferable to bring your machine to our Essex-based workshop, where we have all the necessary tools and equipment needed for a full service. Our skilled engineers will give your machine the TLC it needs, even if it’s an old or rare model such as a John T Marshall.
Find out about our repairs and spares service and get in touch for more information. We can help you #MakeItShiny and keep it that way!