Self-inking stamp
A rubber stamp with a built-in ink pad that re-inks the die after each impression.
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The die sits on a spring mechanism that flips it onto an internal pad between impressions, so there is no separate pad to reach for. Self ink stamp and self inking stamp are the same object spelled differently, and a self inking seal is usually the same mechanism in a round layout.
A self-inking date stamp adds rotating bands for the day, month and year. They have to be turned by hand, which is why documents get stamped with yesterday’s date on the morning nobody remembers.
What fails is rarely the mechanism. It is the wording: the die is moulded once from the artwork supplied, so a moved office or a changed registration number scraps a stamp with thousands of impressions left in it.
Related terms
- Rubber stamp: A hand stamp with a moulded rubber die, inked from a pad and pressed onto paper.
- Pre-inked stamp: A stamp with no pad at all: the ink is held inside the die itself and weeps through under pressure.
- Wet ink stamp: A stamp pressed onto paper in real ink, as opposed to a stamp image applied to a file.
- Date stamp: A stamp whose main content is a date, used to record when a document was received, paid or processed.