How Dollar Bills Are Made
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Ever wondered how dollar bills are made? Here’s a brief run through on the intricate process it goes through, but an interesting one nonetheless.
The first step in the making of a dollar bill is the preparation of the master die, an imprinted piece of soft steel, used in the engraving part of the process. The brilliant adroitness and artistry of the engravers is what brings the dollar bills to life, and they do this by skilfully and carefully cutting different portions of the design, such as the portrait, the vignette, the ornamentation, and the lettering, on each master die. This is why, if you put the dollar bill under a magnifying glass, you will observe that it contains copious amounts of fine lines and dots which varies in size and shape. This unique printing technique is known as the intaglio printing. The designs which are featured on the dollar bills are determined by the Secretary of the Treasury and each of this design has its own historical and idealistic significance.
Siderography, a process used to transfer the hand-graved images on the original dies to a printing plate, is next. Upon completion, the dies will then be stored for use in subsequent production processes, as and when it is needed. As soon as that is sorted out, an impression is taken from the master die and the raised image is then cast in plastic. Various plastic images of the different segments of the dollar bill are then prepared, fitted and fused into the required plate formation. This will consists of thirty-two separate sheets. A series of plates are then produced by placing the plastic altos into an electrolytic tank. The plates are then cleaned, polished, and meticulously inspected by an engraver, after which the recessed image plate is made and another piece of the intaglio plate is placed on a printing press.
The dollar bills are then printed on these high-speed rotary presses which spits out over 8,000 sheets per hour. The surface of the notes are slightly raised, with the reverse side indented, to give it a three dimensional effect. The background of the dollar bills are printed in green ink and the faces printed in black, before it is allowed to dry, and this will take for up to 48 hours.
The dollar bills are then scrutinized under a microscope by an examiner, to meet very high standards in quality. Upon satisfactory inspection, it is then ready to be numbered. The Federal Reserve District seal and its corresponding number designations are then overprinted with black ink using a letterpress. Green ink is used to print the Treasury seal and the serial numbers. Guillotine cutters are used to slice the dollar bills into into single stacks of one-hundred notes, which will be packed up into 40 separate units of bricks, each containing 4,000 notes. These are then distributed to Federal Reserve Districts, to be issued to local banks.
There you have it, that’s how your dollar bills are made.
Tags: dollar bills, Intaglio, Made, Master Die, Production