History of manufacture
In the beginning when plates were owner provided, they were by and large hand-made. They were often house numbers attached to a slab of leather or rubber, or perhaps numbers hand painted on tin. Needless to say these were rather crude looking, and easily faked.
Some examples of early hand-made license plates: leather,
rubber and tin.
When the provinces started issuing the license plates, they made them in these following ways:
- Porcelain fired on heavy steel. These tended to chip easily.
- Tin stretched over a wire rim. The wire rim was supposed to give the plate strength, as the tin itself was flimsy. The design and numbers were silk screened on the flat tin.
- Heavy guage tin with the design and numbers painted on. These were cheaper and easier to produce than the wire rim plates.
- Fiberboard. This was a cheap way of producing plates, but they didn't last.
Early plates made of porcelain, tin w/ wire rim, heavy guage steel and fiberboard
By the 1920s, most provinces were stamping out plates of steel with the numbers and design embossed in. These were easily mass produced and were withstood wear and tear. If the plate became hard to read, it could simply be repainted; in the earlier designs the number could be lost. This method remained essentially unchanged for decades, almost to this day.
When plates rusted, at least the numbers, year, and
place-name were not lost on the embossed plate.
After 50 years, these plates were still made basically
the same way.
Today, most plates are made of light aluminum laminated with a reflectorized coating. The reflectorized sheeting is a plastic adhesive called Scotchlite™, a 3M product. Since the design is silk-screened onto the sheeting, elaborate designs and graphics can be incorporated. The numbers are still embossed and painted afterwards.
In the future, we may see more plates laminated with the serial numbers directly silkscreened onto the plate. This technology, perfected by a German company, Azon-Uscht, is already being used to make some modern US graphic plates. Soon we will probably see its use in Canada.
With modern silk-screening techniques, many pretty
designs are possible.
Let us take a journey through the modern manufacturing process...
At the beginning, you will find a huge roll of metal which is the material the license plates will be made of. If applicable, the Scotchlite™ adhesive containing the background design is applied by a laminating machine. The blanks in the shape of a license plate are cut out from this strip of metal and stacked up beside the stamping machine. The bolt holes are also punched out at this time.
The stamping machine or press is the most important part of the process. At this point the serial number is embossed into the plate, as well as other parts of the design such as the border, jurisdiction and year. This is usually a two stage process with the numbers embossed first, followed by the border and the rest of the design. The press contains a template of the license plate where serial numbered dies can be placed in various positions. The jurisdiction, year, slogan and other features that remain the same, are on dies fixed into position on another template. Only the serial number will change from plate to plate and therefore these dies must be quickly interchangeable. If pairs are being made, two blanks are fed into the machine to be stamped at once.
Steps to manufacture:
embossing the blank, then painting background and foreground.
The coating process is the next step where the embossed parts of the design must be painted. The stamped out plates are fed into a set of rollers which applies paint to all raised surfaces. A foreground color is chosen that offers good contrast to the background such as black on white or blue on white. Red/Black, White/Yellow for example would offer poor contrast.
The final processes ensure
a quality product. The plates roll along a conveyor belt through
a series of ovens to dry and cure the paint. They arrive at the shipping
area where they are quality inspected and bundled up by sealing them in
bags or envelopes. Once boxed, they are shipped to a warehouse, from
which they are distributed to the various issuing offices.
Plate stamping machines. |
Bagging the final product. |
Later on, we shall discuss variations, errors and prototypes in manufacturing license plates.