A variety of methods are used for producing tactile pictures when large volumes are needed. The thermoforming method described above is one such method. Large printing houses for the blind have presses that squeeze braille paper between heavy metal embossing plates. The male/female embossing plate pairs are made by a human-controlled machine and require a skilled operator to achieve reasonable quality. The total cost of making a pair of embossing plates is many hundreds of dollars.
The Braille Institute has developed a printing press method that utilizes a single embossing plate. Paper is pressed between this embossing plate and a rubber material. The images are not as crisp as those produced by good quality embossing plate pairs but are good enough for most purposes. The single embossing plates can be made from standard photoresistive plates and can be produced for $20 to $30 typically.
Hy-tech Forming Systems has developed a pressure bladder that can be used with single embossing plates to produce excellent quality graphic materials. The company has expressed interest in developing presses for the tactile graphics market.
Most printing houses for the blind are willing to accept outside requests for bulk print jobs, although some may not have the capacity for producing non-standard tactile graphics. A Canadian service company, Braille Jymico, offers to make tactile printouts in large or small quantities using a unique polymer deposition printing method.
A recently-founded company, Tactile Vision[5], Inc, Oakville, Ontario CANADA has developed a new method for inexpensive bulk printing of high-resolution tactile graphics using a deposited polymer. This company can make excellent tactile copies from black and white drawings having lines and dots of order 0.05 inches wide. This is a very promising technology that could become the standard bulk process of the future.