By Chad Hase
Director of advanced manufacturing, Custom Etch Inc.
Mold manufacturers using laser technology can play a vital role in brand protection, recyclability and traceability efforts with new digital mold textures.
Laser texturing has opened the door to new possibilities in design, engineering and mold making with the development and implementation of five-axis laser machining.
Tracing the history
The first iteration of laser technology focused on cosmetic texture applications that yielded unprecedented geometric and homogeneous patterns for products across the automotive, aerospace, consumer products, defense and medical industries. These engineered patterns demand full five-axis laser CNC machining, as they are impossible to achieve with traditional chemical etching.
The second evolution involved the development and incorporation of functional textures. This application gives products a physical property while maintaining the required cosmetic appearance — for example, adding a gripping effect to ease handling for touch or grab products, or facilitating a new surgical procedure to help bone growth on implants. Laser texturing has no limitation on design because it is a 100 percent digital process.
The newest evolution is digital watermarking. This application places a unique digital code within a texture, completely hidden to the naked eye but fully readable by machine vision systems, including smartphones. One can apply this embedded digital watermark directly into textures and create an invisible code the size of a postage stamp. This process can only be done using laser technology.
Custom Etch collaborates with Digimarc Corp. (www.digimarc.com) of Beaverton, Ore., to embed digital watermark technology into textures applied by its laser systems. The codes, which all are unique, are strings of numbers that point to a database able to carry a wide range of attributes for a variety of use cases.
Why use digital watermarking textures?
Here are key benefits of digital watermarking textures:
Brand Protection
- Counterfeiting impacts trade, jobs and brand reputation, making anti-counterfeit solutions attractive. For example, a laser digital watermark texture ensures product authenticity and aids in identifying knockoffs.
- A strategically placed digital texture offers digital tracking that can improve brand safety and anti-counterfeiting measures critical to regulatory compliance in the medical and pharmaceutical markets.
- Most products have no digital presence, making their lifecycle unknown. Laser digital watermarks confirm data effortlessly with digital authentication and analysis.
Recyclability
- Digital textures act as a digital passport for a circular economy and show consumers companies’ alignment with sustainability initiatives.
- Digital textures offer label-less design, making recycling easier.
- Digital textures are a solution for the regulatory scrutiny and consumer sentiment that dictates manufacturers’ responsibilities to manage plastic waste better. For example, the packaging industry’s ‟HolyGrail 2.0” initiative (www.digitalwatermarks.eu) involves more than 170 companies and organizations in Europe and is focused on using digital watermarks to improve sorting accuracy.
- Digital textures deliver data about packaging attributes, such as a package’s reusable post-consumer recycled (PCR) material.
Traceability
- Digital textures play a vital role in Industry 4.0 by delivering product digitization that illuminates more about the manufacturing process and business. This digitally scanned data eliminates from vital product information the need for manual documentation and the possibility of human error. For example, the textures can embed information about product transportation.
- Digital textures digitally structure and streamline compliance of regulations imposed by agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Occupation Safety and Health Administration, the International Organization for Standardization and other organizations.
- Digital watermarks can indicate who manufactured the product, as well as its resin type, color, weight, use, recyclability, and other characteristics, such as whether the package is monolayer or multi-layer, carbon black or opaque, or contains recycled material.
Additional facts about digital textures
- Unlike a static QR code, digital textures are dynamic and can point to a new source of information at any given time — making them 100 percent customizable.
- Information via internal and external data retrieval means that product intelligence is accessible for deeper business insights on a product’s complete lifecycle, better brand integrity, accuracy, efficiency, security and supply chain traceability.
Laser texturing is widely accepted in today’s manufacturing process, as it offers product improvement and higher quality. Laser digital textures give mold builders a new, innovative solution to meet customer needs and open the door to new business opportunities across all end markets.
This article appears in the summer 2025 issue of The Journal of Blow Molding.
© 2025, Society of Plastics Engineers Blow Molding Division
Chad Hase
Chad Hase is the director of advanced manufacturing at Custom Etch Inc., a design company based in New Castle, Pa. He has 30 years of experience in tool and die manufacturing and has been instrumental in bringing new laser technologies to North America.
Hase’s current research involves the study of digital watermarks and continued studies on surface treatment from different laser sources on medical and aerospace materials and microstructures. Since 1982, Custom Etch has provided its customers with support to develop their texture ideas and create the best possible aesthetic and functional textured surfaces. More information can be found at www.custometch.com.
This article appeared in The Journal of Blow Molding.
