[Mark_C]

If you have a metal tag designed to be read from the front and you are making an impression in it from the rear using a digit or character, you are making an exact copy of that digit or character. So all the characters in the tag machine are normal, think of the trim tag as a paper credit card receipt (back in the day) and the trim tag machine as the old credit card machine. You put your credit card under the reciept and the machine rolls across it and makes an impression of your card in the reciept. All the info transferred over to the receipt by the raised letters on your card is perfectly legible on the paper copy (or the trim tag). If you were printing from the front you would need reversed characters, like they used to use when printing newspapers. You also would need to arrange the direction of the reversed stamps so that they read right to left (ie they would be legible in a mirror).

If you are stamping number in the surface of a material that is designed to be read from the same side, you need reversed characters like those used in the egg and gang stamps, used to place the partial VINs and engine suffix codes on the firewall and engine blocks.