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Bleed: A printing term referring to art that extends
up to the very edge of the card. Art that bleeds requires
some additional printing time and attention.
Low Coercivity Magnetic Stripe: Coercivity is
the term used to designate how much energy is required
to put information onto the magnetic stripe and therefore
how immune the data is to damage from magnetic money clips
and magnetic purse snaps. LoCo mag stripes are composed
of iron oxide and are most commonly used in applications
that do not require long term or heavy use, such as hotel
keys and gift cards. The Oersted rating for a loco mag
is 300 Oe.
High Coercivity Magnetic Stripe: HiCo stripes
are almost immune to domestic-type magnets and so are
used for your major credit cards and other applications
needing a long life card, like server sign-in cards at
restaurants.
Encoding: The process of electronically "writing"
information on to magnetic stripes or smart card chips.
A blank magnetic stripe will need some information encoded
onto it to work with any gift or loyalty card system.
There are 2 or 3 tracks on a mag stripe that can accept
data. Track 1 will accept alpha and numeric data and a
total of 79 characters. Track 2 will accept numeric data
only; a total of 40 characters. Track 3 also only takes
numbers and has a 107 character limit. What track(s) gets
encoded and data needs will be determined by your systems
requirements.
Embossing: Raised numbers or letters like your
credit cards. We have 2 sizes available: large numbers,
or the smaller all caps letters or numbers. We recommend
a maximum of 3 lines of text. The raised text can be foil
tipped in silver, gold, or black. If tipping is applied
to a printed area, the ink must be varnished.
Thermal Personalization: Flat printing or letters,
numbers, or barcodes, available in almost any font or
size. Colors available are black, gold, silver, red, blue,
green, or white. If thermal printing is applied over ink,
the ink must be varnished. Red, blue and green are best
used on a white or very light colored background.
Scratch Off Panel: A thermal printing process
that is applied over names, numbers or codes for security
purposes. Available in gray with a black wavy pattern.
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