Marking of pieces after molding

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#1

Hopefully someone has done this…

We are trying to permanently mark each piece we are making after they are molded with a date/year kind of thing.

My boss thinks that we can ‘brand’ this into the gelcoat and FG by heating up a stamp and pressing it into the surface. All I can think is that this is not going to work based on a couple quick tests that I tried.

Has anyone else done such a thing? I know we could put markers in the molds to do this, but we have a lot of molds, so it would be a lot of tags to change each week so I can see it not getting done and causing errors…

I was thinking of leaving a small pocket where we could fill it with Bondo and then press the stamp in there, but I’m not sure how well that would work either. I don’t think we want to affix a metal tag if possible.

Currently we are using peel off labels, but our customers are peeling them all the way off so the information is lost.

Any ideas?

Thanks

#2

small sticker and some resin over the top of it.

#3

Ditto (and more to make the minimum 10 character length for a post)

#4

they sell stamps that are incorporated into metal molds…they are the arrow ones ( that point to date/year), which can be rotated as needed…that might work?

Carefully scribe with a point, or a electric one, and when u need to change, sand away, refill with gelcoat, and rescribe?

Add to the sticker you use now “Removeing this label will cause death!”

just an idea.

#5

they sell stamps that are incorporated into metal molds…they are the arrow ones ( that point to date/year), which can be rotated as needed…that might work?

Carefully scribe with a point, or a electric one, and when u need to change, sand away, refill with gelcoat, and rescribe?

Add to the sticker you use now “Removeing this label will cause death!”

just an idea.

#6

Just to clarify and help -
This is going on the gelcoated surface, so laminating a sticker isn’t going to work here. We already do this further ‘upstream’ in the process, but these are for assembled pieces where only the gelcoated surface shows.

Also, I’d prefer not to have to put this into each mold, I would rather mark the pieces as they come down the line already assembled rather than at lamination if possible.

Riff-I’ve seen the dial stamps you’re talking about, but we don’t want to buy 100 of them and try to keep them all with the date current.

Any further thoughts?

#7

Would some kind of acid etching work?
You can buy kits to make circuit board prototypes and also a film (acid-etch resist film) to make a sticker as the negative.

I dont know if it’s what you’re after but it shouldn’t be too expensive to try on an offcut.

EDIT: The acid eats copper so I’d reckon it would at least mark your resin.

#8

I dont get why you want an identification mark on the outside. Im staying with the sticker under resin on the inside of the part.

The badge is for your reference unless of course reality says that you are actually trying to ID badge for advertisement instead of lettting your customers sell it for you.

#9

yeah. Good point. Then try my other idea of smiteing people who take the label off :slight_smile: