Personalized Crystal Awards
Crystal awards are a unique way to express gratitude and recognize top performance. Our crystal awards come in a variety of shapes designed for specific recognition themes such diamonds, flames, stars, or world globes. We also offer crystal trophies tailored for specific accolades such as sales achievements, years of service, employee appreciation, leadership and retirement. Our artisans have over 50 years of experience creating truly unique works of art combining different colors of crystal such as cobalt blue, jade, red, amber, purple and black. Alternatively we offer a full collection of Art Glass Awards which are mouth blown and can encompass dramatic streams of color while being shaped into unique designs.
Customized Crystal Trophies
Alternatively we are able to create a custom shaped crystal trophy designed around your specific branding or company logo. Our equipment can custom cut, etch and apply logos and special artwork to all of our glass and crystal trophies. When it comes to personalization, we can work with you to create a meaningful award. Utilizing color, typesetting and special styling-queues your customized crystal awards will be perfect while delivering on build quality and excellence.
Service Awards
Our service awards stand out and they truly make a big impression. This type of award usually recognizes the recipient for their commitment and dedication which creates positive feelings about your company for years to come. They will appreciate and display this trophy proudly at their home. Our most popular service awards are designed from crystal, glass and marble. Some service awards feature crystal clocks, and all you have to do is add your recipient's name, a company logo and years of service. Our products are easy to customize.
With our factory-direct pricing, your organization can purchase crystal trophies year round and celebrate a new person each month without breaking the bank. We offer a variety of sizes, shapes, and price ranges to match any occasion or ceremony.
Crystal trophies are durable, appreciated, and timeless. Our company makes ordering easy, customization simple, and our engraving is always free— the only thing difficult about our process is choosing from our many design options.
Appreciation Crystal Awards
Say thank you and motivate your team with Appreciation Crystals. These awards are budget friendly items that allow management the ability to recognize top performers on the spot. Appreciation awards build excitement and inspire improved performance. Our collection includes colorful options that feature K9 optical crystal and a premium build quality.
Optical Crystal Awards
Optical Crystal is generally constructed from several elements which aid in its clarity including silica, lead oxide and potash as opposed to glass which frequently contains soda lime making it cloudy. Optical crystal is known for its clarity and refraction. When cut and polished in a precise manner, crystal awards go a step beyond glass creating rainbow prisms when placed under a light making it the perfect option to use in creation of awards and fine trophies.
Engraved Crystal Awards
The differences between laser engraving and abrasive etching on crystal awards are vast. Our process of deep abrasive etching is uncompromising in quality but necessary to create premium quality crystal awards. Here we explain both processes and why abrasive etching is far superior. Once the creation of artwork and proofing are completed the steps are vastly different with different end results.
Laser Engraved Crystal Awards
For laser engraving the preparation and initial set-up is much quicker. The art to be engraved is positioned in the design software and the laser table is adjusted to obtain the proper distance from the lens. This brings the art in focus so that the convergence point of the beam is on the surface of the glass. The settings for power and speed are adjusted in the process control software and the file is sent.
Once the file has been sent, the laser is activated and a beam strikes the glass. Even though we call this engraving, the laser is actually reacting to the moisture trapped between the elements of silica and metal in the glass or crystal. Basically what is achieved are microscopic fractures of the glass which looks like “engraving”.
The overall quality is less than ideal and small artwork or reverse designs come out with questionable quality. Another drawback to laser engraving of crystal awards is the fact that the engraving area needs to be flat. There has to be clearance for the mirror and lens assembly as it travels back and forth without hitting other parts of the award. The laser process, while acceptable the majority of the time can disappoint occasionally. Its main attribute is that it is quick with much less set-up and preparation time resulting in a lower cost.
Etched Crystal Awards
Abrasive etching, also known as sandblasting of crystal awards is capable of producing great detail in logos and quality resolution can be held down to 5 point characters in lettering. This is especially important when etching smaller faceted designs found in our premium k9 clear crystal awards collection. The sand etched process can even be used to create images with a 50 dpi halftone screen. It is a photographic process and the quality of etching reflects this accuracy and detail.
To begin the preparations to create your etched crystal award a film positive is made and inspected for opaqueness. After making sure that all lines are of a reproducible thickness the film is placed on an ultraviolet vacuum table exposure unit, a very thin mask which is basically a light sensitive diazo compound is placed above the UV lamp and film positive and a vacuum is applied to sandwich the film and mask together tightly. After exposure the mask is transferred to a washout station which sprays heated water on the mask to create a stencil that will later be applied to the award as an engraving template.
The next step has the crystal award being placed into the blast cabinet. At this time an experienced craftsman will use the blast wand which when activated will shoot a stream of aluminum oxide on to the award. Where the mask was not exposed by the uv light, the diazo washed away, leaving an area the blast media can contact the crystal award's surface. This is where the media being shot at high velocity hits the crystal surface slowly etching it.
The next step has the crystal trophy being placed in a large water tank to soften the mask for easy removal. The mask and tape are removed and the crystal award is dried and inspected. The final step is a thorough cleaning with glass cleaner and a final quality check for blast-offs, scratches or areas where the abrasive did not go through completely.
As you can see, the abrasive engraving is a much more time consuming process with many more steps and handling of the crystal trophy. However the end result is far superior to laser engraving. Understandably, the etched crystal process is more costly but we feel well worth the investment to reward and motivate those people who deserve an award.
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