Thieme: In Mint Condition – Colour that Holds

Hold a freshly minted 5-euro collector coin from the Wonders of Insects series. Red mason bee. Stag beetle. Hoverfly. The colour bonds to the metal and stays put yet seems to lift from the relief. The reason is the process: digital colour laid directly onto an embossed, highly reflective surface on a THIEME Digital Mint system.

Coins are small, curved and unforgiving. Low-contrast metal, fine relief and tight tolerances make registration hard. Many digital lines tackle this with camera-based position detection in a separate station. Coins sit loosely in a tray, vision measures position and rotation, artwork is adjusted, then the tray is moved into the printer. It works as long as nothing shifts. The problem is the hand-off. Any nudge between vision and print can misalign a coin and lengthen the cycle with extra handling.

THIEME integrates the steps so the physics stay stable. Coins are placed as they fall, vacuum fixed, measured by a camera inside the same machine, and printed on that same platform. Detection and printing share one base, so the coin that was measured is the coin that is printed. Layer on layer, whites, colours and protective coats land where they should, even on mirror-bright metal. Loading, measurement, printing and output follow one coordinated motion plan. For higher throughput, autoloaders move trays from a magazine trolley through the system and back again, enabling fully automated, line-integrated production suited to standardised processes and larger series.

Pad printing still has a place. For many applications it remains a practical method with well-understood workflows and materials. However, for small or medium series with frequent artwork changes, fine gradients and multi-layer builds, digital colour often delivers more consistent laydown, faster changeovers and lower handling overheads.

On Digital Mint systems, colour is razor sharp, opaque and abrasion resistant. Artwork is aligned to the relief, not just the tray pocket, so legs, wings and highlights sit exactly where the designer intended. On reflective substrates the result feels less “printed on top” and more animated by light.

Precision is the point. The payoff is a coin that stands up to handling, matches the render and earns its place in a capsule. THIEME Digital Mint brings integrated vision and printing, vacuum-stable handling and optional autoloaders, ready for one-offs, limited editions and series production.

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