Crystal Awards

Personalized Crystal Awards

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.

Custom Crystal Trophies

Alternatively we are able to create a unique 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 awards will be perfect while delivering on build quality and excellence.

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 unique designs with a premium quality build. 

Optical Crystal

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. Awards built using optical crystal are known for their clarity and refraction. When cut and polished in a precise manner, these optical designs go a step beyond glass creating rainbow prisms when placed under a light making them the perfect option to use in creation of fine awards.

Engraved Crystal Awards

The differences between laser engraving and sandblasting on crystal are vast. Our process of deep abrasive etching is uncompromising in quality and necessary to create the WOW-factor our customers have grown to expect. 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.

Sandblasted Crystal Awards

Abrasive etching, also known as sandblasting 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 stunning faceted designs found in our premium 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 award being placed into the blasting cabinet. At this time an experienced craftsman will use the blast wand to shoot a stream of aluminum oxide onto the engraving area. Where the mask was not exposed by the uv light, the diazo washed away, leaving an area the blast media can penetrate the award's surface. This is where the media being shot at high velocity hits the crystal surface slowly etching it.

Finally the trophy is 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, abrasive engraving is a much more time consuming process with many more steps and handling of the award. 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.