Embossed Leather: Differences with Printed Leather

Embossed Leather vs Printed Leather

Leather printing is a method of finishing with which we manage to produce a wide range of effects and textures on our accessories. There are rather beautiful fabrics or prints with colors and shapes that are more or less sober.

The word printed leather is often used in Turkish to group all the countless styles of printing that can be found on leather or hide, but there is a distinction inherent in the technique used in fact. we can differentiate between printed leathers in general and embossed leathers.

Printed Leather

Printed leather reflects the macro group of skin that involves all forms of printing, including those rendered on the surface with a pattern / design, not actually in relief, but producing the desired textures thanks to special machinery that emits color precisely on the surface of the skin.

Embossed Leather

Embossed leather is a sub-category of printed leather: embossed leather implies a more clearly printed skin that is traditionally used to create a skin form similar to that of snakes or to make embossed pattern. This relief is obtained by exerting a heavy pressure on a smooth surface by heat, with a mold on which is etched the desired motif / design. Thanks to this hot pressure, the relief print will be reflected on the whole surface of the leather.

The English language typically distinguishes between two major categories, unlike Turkish, where there is a single broad group called specifically 'printed leather':

• "Printed Leather" in which we can have hides of leather that have a texture, motif, pattern or pattern not printed on the surface in relief."
• "Embossed Leather" of which leather worked in relief is used.

The first word "printed leather" often involves the tiny prints that mimic the leather's natural porosity: the so-called "false grain" and those prints that mimic the "dry-milling or drumming" or "flywheel" effect. The "Dollar" print, for example, is a method that reveals a grain that is more or less fine and round, often called pebble leather.

A much more accentuated, elevated embossing suggests the second word "embossed leather" and can be separated into two major types:

• Reptiles, such as crocodile embossed leather (where we prefer to create modules that duplicate only one section of the animal) or smaller reptiles, such as the various forms of lizards (where we also tend to reproduce the entire configuration of the animal's skin to receive lizard embossed leather), snakes, birds (such as ostrich embossed leather)
• The second is total imagination, including abstract prints, flower prints, etc.
• As already mentioned in the Turkish language, the word "printed leather" or "embossed leather" is widely used to denote all types of leather with a print, whether for example they be crocodile-embossed leather or silk-screened or plotter-printed hides.

Printed and Embossed Leather: how are they made?

In the case of both "printed" and "embossed" types, the different types of printing are numerous and two processing methods are substantially used: "plate printing" or "roller printing."

Within the to begin with case, we have a press as the working machine, from which a metal plate with the plan to be utilized is put at the best. The measurements of the molding plate, rectangular in shape, cannot surpass one meter on one side and one meter and twenty on the other, in this manner, for calfskins that are as well huge or as well long, squeezing must essentially be done twice with the hazard of taking note an unsavory intersection (or not a idealize collimation) between the two prints.

In the second case, in which the problem of non-continuity of the printing of the first case is solved, operating machines consisting of an embossed metal roller up to a width of approximately two and a half meters can operate continuously on both small and full very large hides commonly used for car upholstery or sofas ('automotive leather', 'home supplies', 'sofa leather', 'upholstery leather').

However, according to three very critical criteria, all operating machines can be set:

• The impression time, in the case of the roller machine, for each press stroke, which becomes the rotation speed;
• The molding module's metal temperature;
• The required pressure for molding.

By carefully and wisely integrating these three parameters, different impacts can be achieved, very appreciable according to the different desired needs.

You will find a page devoted to printed leather for sale in general and a sub-category dedicated to embossed leather on our leather online store to help pick from the several different styles of hides that we have for sale.