Are the pens engraved or imprinted?
A few weeks ago a customer received their pen and was under the impression that the pen they received was not engraved but imprinted.   Of course it was laser engraved, and some understanding was all that was needed.  

But it gives us a good chance here to discuss how engraving works and effects the final appearance of the decoration on the pens. 

First, just to clarify, we do not even own printing equipment for decorating personal names therefore we only pens with personal names by our laser engraving machines.  No exceptions when it comes to personal names, they are all laser engraved.

(We DO offer printing options for pens with a business logo on them, usually these CAN be imprinted in color or engraved by customers choice. But not for personal names.  This business logo option requires a higher min order of 24 pens and has a logo setup fee. )

When a laser beam hits the metal on pen, depending on alloy in the pen or depending on if the pen is a coated metal, the decoration can appear differently. 

Here are some general rules:

- if a metal pen is coated in color ( like blue or black pen), the laser will cleanly 'burn' off the coating revealing the base metal under it.  The resulting color of the engraving is typically a gold, brass, or silver color depending on the base metal of the pen under the coating.  We do not choose this color, it is based on the base metal of the manufacturer.

- if a pen is 'bare' metal ( like a steel or Gold pen), the laser engraving will appear what we call tone on tone.  The contrast is a nice there, but it is more subtle.  Steel pens engrave in a light copper color generally.  Gold pens will show up a different shade of gold to a dark gray depending on many KRT gold pen you choose.  We think that the tone on tone is a very classy look. 

- A few pens like the Cross Adventura are color filled.  This means the laser engraves it and then the engraving is manually filled with a color compound.  

- And lastly on a few other pens bare metal pens, we offer what is called Black oxidized engraving.  This means we put a compound on the pen before we run it through the laser.  After it is engraved, we clean off the compound and the engraving will be black.  It may have the appearance of being printed, but it is not.

In another post, we will outline in a list how the engraving looks on different pen styles.

We welcome any questions that will help us to explain this further so our fine customers can know how the final product will look.