Domed Resin Labels Hull: Made and Domed in Our Own Workshop

Look at the front panel of a touring caravan that has been towed up and down the coast for three winters. The printed vinyl badge has gone milky at the edges and a fingernail can lift one corner. Next to it, a domed resin label from the same year still looks wet, still reads clean, and the corner will not lift because there is a solid lump of clear polyurethane sitting over it. That gap in behaviour is the whole reason domed labels exist. The domed resin labels Hull firms order from us are printed, poured and cured in our own unit in the city, so this page can tell you exactly what happens to your job.

Inside the building: what happens to a Hull job between artwork and box

We are not a reseller with a Hull phone number. The machines are here, and so are we. A job that comes in from Sutton Fields or the Marfleet corridor goes through the same room as everything else, and here is the order it goes in.

Artwork lands by email or through the contact form. Someone opens it, checks the vector paths, checks that the small type is not going to close up under the dome, and checks the colour build in CMYK. If a Saltend contractor sends us a plant identification layout with 4pt text, we say so rather than printing it and hoping. You get a free digital proof back with the dome outline drawn on it, so you can see exactly where the resin will stop.

Once you sign it off, we print full colour onto the label stock, and the sheet goes to the plotter for kiss cutting so the shape is cut before the dome goes on, not after. Then the resin. Polyurethane is mixed and dispensed onto each printed label, and surface tension does the rest, pulling the liquid out to the cut edge and holding it there in a curved bubble. This is the part that cannot be rushed and cannot be posted somewhere else. The sheets go flat onto a rack, level to the millimetre, and stay there while the resin cures. Dust is the enemy. So is knocking the rack.

After curing we check the domes in raking light for craters and trapped air, strip the waste, and pack. Because we ship from Hull, a caravan builder in the East Riding, a food processing plant on the western side of the city, a workshop in the Fruit Market, and a fabricator working on wind turbine components near Alexandra Dock are all being served out of the same racks. It also means when something is wrong you are talking to the person who watched it cure, not a call centre. Ring 01482 653790 and it is a short walk to the rack.

Domed resin labels Hull firms fit to kit that lives outdoors

The Humber estuary is a salt air environment with a port running through the middle of it. That changes what a label has to survive. The work we see most of falls into a few honest groups.

• Leisure vehicles. Caravan and motorhome manufacturing is one of the biggest industries in Hull and the East Riding, and domed badges are the standard way to put a maker's mark or a model name on a GRP or aluminium body panel. They take jet washing, road salt and UV.
• Chemicals and energy. Saltend Chemicals Park sits just east of the city and is a cluster of chemicals and energy businesses. Contractors working there need clear, hard wearing marking on control boxes, cabinets and equipment.
• Offshore wind. Siemens Gamesa has run a blade factory at Alexandra Dock since 2016, and the supply chain around it is full of engineering firms who need branded plates and asset marking on tooling and gear.
• Food processing. Food manufacturing has been a large employer in Hull for a very long time. Machines get washed down, and a domed label on a guard or a hopper handles that better than a paper faced sticker.
• Independent shops and bars. Around the Old Town and the Fruit Market there is a cluster of independents, and a domed badge on a bar top, a bike, a cabinet or a piece of merchandise reads like something worth money.
• Small runs and prototypes. The University of Hull is in the city, and spin outs, societies and one person workshops all need short runs. We have low and no minimum order quantities, so twenty pieces is a real order, not a favour.

The dome is a lens, and it will magnify what you send us

People forget this. Two millimetres of clear polyurethane is not a laminate. It is an optical layer with a curve in it, so it behaves like a lens. That is good news for a bold logo, because the colour goes deeper and the edges gain a bright rim of reflected light. It is bad news for two things.

The first is fine detail near the edge. A curved dome pulls the outer few millimetres of the label into the bend, so a border line running close to the cut edge will look distorted from an angle. Give it clearance. The second is thin light type. Reversed out text under 6pt tends to fill in visually once the resin sits over it. If your logo has a strap line in 5pt grey, we will tell you at proof stage and suggest bumping it up or dropping it.

Send vectors if you have them. If all you have is a photo of an old badge off a machine, send that too. We redraw more than people expect.

Backing, adhesive and what you are sticking to

The dome is the visible bit, but the failures happen underneath it. Two facts about your surface matter more than anything else: how much energy the surface has, and how flat it is.

A domed label wants a reasonably flat area to sit on. The resin will not bend to follow a tight curve. If the face is tightly curved, a printed sticker or a flat label is the more sensible answer, and we will say so instead of selling you the shinier product.

Everything is made in house here in Hull, the digital proof is free, minimums are low or none at all, and shipping is free over 99 pounds. That is the whole ordering story. Look at the shapes and sizes on the domed resin labels page, and if you also need engraved or printed plates for the same machines, our nameplates and badges and domed keyrings come off the same artwork.

Questions we get asked from HU postcodes

Will a domed label survive salt air on the Humber?

Yes. Polyurethane resin is UV stable and does not care about salt spray. The thing that fails first in a marine or estuary environment is the adhesive bond, not the dome, which is why we ask what surface you are sticking to before we quote.

Can I get domed badges that match my caravan or motorhome model branding?

Yes, and it is one of the most common jobs we do. Send us the model name artwork and the panel material. We print full colour CMYK, so a metallic look has to be printed as artwork rather than as a real foil, and we will show you that on the proof.

Our machines get pressure washed every shift. Will the dome lift?

Not if the label is sized and sited sensibly. Keep the jet off the edge, avoid putting a large dome across a joint or a panel gap, and choose a shape with no sharp corners. Circles and ovals shed water better than a sharp cornered rectangle.

Do you ship, or is this a Hull only thing?

We make everything in Hull and ship it out, so you do not have to be in the city to order. Being local just means you can pick the phone up and get the person who ran the job.

Can you dome something small, like a twenty piece run for a startup?

Yes. Low and no minimum order quantities are real. A prototype run of a handful goes through exactly the same print, dome and cure as a run of thousands.