Help making leather Label/ logo for my mattress company

[Amys Vintage]

Hello! 

I am hoping to find someone to work with that can create my label/ logo to be sewn onto my mattresses. I am a new mattress manufacturer and I am building flippable all natural mattresses and want to continue that thru a leather label. I was thinking that it could be cut out of softer, more pliable leather and maybe use a branding iron to burn the logo in. I do have a file that has the shape cut around the logo. I am not sure how to make an attachment here but my website is Vintage-Mattress.com If anyone has any suggestions or know of someone that would like to work with me on this project I would greatly appreciate it! Thank you! Amy

[mbnaegle]

With process's like this, it's best to try to fit your application to the equipment and methods that are already in use and available. Stamped tags like you want are frequently used for all leather goods, such as saddle makers stamping their logo on part of the saddle, handbag makers on the side of a purse, or jean makers on a swatch of leather. I'm not sure about having another company make the tags for you to sew in (perhaps others can give you some leads there), but should you choose to make them yourself, the process would be to first find what kind of leather you want to use (leather supplier) and then cut those pieces into the shaped blanks. This can be done with a "cookie cutter" type Rule Die and a clicker (kind of hydraulic press), or with a CNC cut-out machine. You may be able to improvise a clicker to by adding a platen and plastic cutting pad to a press, and some companies make benchtop machines like this, but they are manually operated and can wear you out if you are doing a lot of tags.

To stamp the tags, you would first have the die made by an engraving company that specializes in it, and they are typically made from brass (better) or aluminum (ok). That die would be mounted in a Hot Stamping Machine which electrically heats the die to a determined temperature, and manually (by hand or foot operation) or pneumatically (needs an air compressor hooked up) embosses it into the material for a determined time. Time and Temp are the biggest variables on machines like this. Pressure too, but once that's set, time and temp will have a bigger influence on how deep and defined the impression goes. Leather hides are often bought at thinner thickness's for jobs like this, but that doesn't mean they are perfectly uniform thickness. If you have one swatch that is thinner on one side than the other, that will make the stamping imperfect. You might be able to compensate by using a soft felt backing, or you might need to split the swatches to a thinner but uniform thickness after they are cut. In most other leather stamping applications, they would stamp a piece of leather before it is attached to the final product, for the same reason of needing a uniformly flat material to stamp evenly.

As with everything, a lot of this will depend if you want to make 10 tags, 100 tags, or 1,000,000 tags. Each step has a more primitive hands-on approach that will be fine for a few, but seriously slow you down the more you need. There isn't really a machine made that you can throw a hide of leather at and have it spit out a bunch of finished tags. They all have a certain level of hands on operation due to the variation that comes with working with a natural material like leather, but there are different things you can do to automate the process and speed it up, like using a pneumatic hot stamper in place of a manual one, or using one with a rotary table that allows you to load the next piece while the prior one is still stamping. CNC cut-out machines are very expensive, particularly if you are only using it for this one job, but are way more efficient and faster than cutting them out with a rule die on a clicker. You might be able to use a more commodity type cut out machine like a Cricket, but they have thickness limitations and don't typically have room for a whole hide of leather, meaning you'll be pre-cutting it into smaller chunks end ending up with a lot more waste (Leather is not a cheap material).

The clicker and the hot stamper would be your main equipment investments, and the rule die for cut-out and the brass die for stamping would be your only custom tooling. The hot stamper likely will need some kind of centering guides too, but typically they can be supplied with something basic that would work fine. Even if you have another company make the tags for you, you are essentially paying them to use their equipment, but you will still need to invest in your own dies for them to use. If your swatches are rectangular, you may be able to use a jack-shear instead of a clicker and rule die, which is essentially a massive paper guillotine big enough to cut a whole hide of leather. They are often used for things like belt production to "block" out panels that will be cut into strips, but can also cut smaller finish pieces. Just know that if your swatches are varying in length, width, or squareness, those differences could look more apparent once they are stamped. If you need to split the pieces after they are cut to get them to a uniform thickness, thicker denser leathers could be done with a small fixed-blade benchtop splitter, but soft thin leathers would require a Band Knife Splitter, which are only available as powered machinery.

We've worked with Lotus Creations for brass dies before and been pleased with their work. They can take a digital image, some specifications of the length, width, embossing depth, etc. and produce a die.

For the Hot Stamper, most production type machines are made in Italy these days by companies like Galli, Omac, and some others. There are some companies here in the states that do more manual operated machinery too.

For cut-out, I'm partial to Atom (made in Italy) for clickers, Comelz for CNC (Atom also makes CNC cut-out machines). Galli makes a decent guillotine shear, and there are lots of old US made shears like John Jacques that will work fine if they are complete with a good blade. Jacques is no longer in business so if it's got busted castings or really messed up blades, walk away from it. Most blade sharpening companies can sharpen shear blades of any length. To do a hyde of leather, you would want a shear with 55 to 60" cutting area.

Edited June 6 by mbnaegle

[chuck123wapati]

Or get a hand embossing machine, they use them to make belts, straps, and also for stuff like this. buy a roller with your logo, buy your leather cut into straps, and go to town emboss a strap, then cut out each logo with minimal waste.  If you want your logo with a particular shape, get a clicker die made to cut out the logos, a press will be needed for the dies. Two manual machines max, and a very small learning curve.

Good luck to whoever takes this job, you could make hundreds of tags a day by hand and make easy money!!!