Hallmark Cards Production Center

Our most recent field trip was spent at the Hallmark production center in Lawrence. I was first somewhat amazed by how massive the center was. Also, I figured they actually designed and printed the cards there, but in fact they get the card templates, that are already designed, shipped to them. They produce ribbon products, bows, and the final stages of the card effects. They also deal with the packaging stages of all of their products. Materials that they use include paper, foil, hot foil, corrugate (for shipping), polypropylene pellets, and plastics. Their processes include embossing press, crinkle press, injection molds, foil roller press, flocking, flitter, virko, dye-cutting and UV spot center. Around 1.5 to 3 million cards are shipped out the door per day. The factory runs 24 hours a day, 5 days a week. They are usually the most busy around Mother's Day. Little to no hand applied work goes on inside the factory. I really liked their virko processes; they do this to raise words a tiny bit above the paper card with plastic and adhesive. The UV spot center is for scratch-n-sniff cards and iridescent over foil and UV matte over foil. To make their ribbons they use the polypropylene pellets, a blowing agent, and coloring. The most fascinating fact about the trip was that they have engineers to make their own machines that are specifically made for certain processes of the card making that goes on. The man that took me on my trip actually showed us one of the machines that he helped create. It was the robot arm machine that manually slides cards under the arm, where the arm will pick up and paste plastic beads onto it in certain spots that are programmed in, depending on the card.