HUMAL Elektroonika Ltd. started in 1990 with development and production of electronic equipment as its main activity. We are located in Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia. A lot of new companies started around that time. With a view and desire to respond to the great local demand for stamps we were determined to find a good way to produce stamps. We found a good soviet industrial laser engraver, made in Ukraine. We developed the control software to engrave stamps, connected the laser to a PC and started the production of rubber stamps in 1991.This production line was given the trademark HUMAL Stamp Production.

Soon we also started to look for foam materials to produce pre-inked stamps with the use of the laser engraver. We started to engrave pre-inked stamps from Dura powder material in 1992. Althought we wasn’t happy with the imprint quality. In 1994 we visited EMDEC in Nice, France. Main purpose was to look for new pre-inked materials available for laser engraving, but we found the new material from Japan that didn’t suit for laser engraving.

But we found that it works with the flash light. Soon we started to test this new development in our production and also to investigate the possibilities of patenting the method. We filed the patent application early 1995 and also sold the first FlashStamp machines to other stamp producers later the same year. We had a lot of feedback from our first customers, which led to valuable development of the concept. Our article about this technology was published in the MIM Europe October 1995 issue. We started to use FlashStamp as trademark for the technology and also for the ready-made stamps.

The FlashStamp equipment has a very high production capacity and is really aimed at the medium to large stamp producers – you could produce a few thousand stamps per day easily, if you can manage to sell them… But let’s face it, there are still a higher number of small stamp manufacturers who only produce a few stamps per day.

To help the small manufacturer we started, 1999, to develop a new concept, especially keeping in mind people who need a relatively inexpensive simple method. The aim was a small piece of equipment and no compromises on stamp quality. The DirectStamp machine was born. The production with the DirectStamp machine is even simpler than that of FlashStamp. The DirectStamp machine itself fits almost under the corner of a computer monitor, (see photo) certainly comfortably on any desk because it does hardly require any space. Still, the imprint quality is excellent. The DirectStamp machine produces stamps of the same high quality as The FlashStamp machine.