Etched Welding Tags: Custom 16GA 304SS
I’m proud to announce that CNCROi.com has now released our latest generation of custom super heavy-duty etched welding tags made out of custom 16GA 304SS.
Of course, it goes without saying that if you want custom etched welding tags for your business at another gauge, metal type, size, finish and or design, CNCROi.com still does that too!
We just aren’t as stringent regarding minimum order quantities with these relative to our totally custom solutions for welders, fabricators and manufacturers.
These tags are just something we produce in bulk for quick 24-48 hour turnaround for clients needing something NOW that’s affordable and ready-to-go solution wise.
All our custom welding tags, and by extension metal tags for machines and ID plates, are NOT printed, they are produced using our fiber laser source.
This means what you see on the tag (black through brown color) will not fade from exposure to the Sun, chip, crack or peel even if exposed to high temperature variances or the outdoor elements.
There are a variety of surface finishes available with stainless steel but the vast majority are either #4 brush finish which you see on our thinner welding tags or raw like our custom etched welding tags.
The durability of all our custom welding tags is second to none, so when I say that this is super durable, it’s like saying a taller mountain is more durable to a lower mountain.
Regardless of your choice of our custom welding tags, they will easily outlast just about anything else in the market, which is why they are so popular with our customers.
We now offer four different “standard” custom welding tag options.
The most cost-effective etched welding tags we offer are anodized aluminium, they are just as durable as our other options, just a little bit less so relatively speaking.
Watch this video to show you the relative strength of various etched welding tags solutions CNCROi.com offers.
CNCROi.com doesn’t just produce top of the line, industry leading etched welding tags and machine plates, we also test and show you their relative strength.
Our other three etched welding tag options are all 304 stainless steel, with the latest being the thickest at 16 gauge which is about 4x thicker than our annealed custom welding tag option.
The reason for the thicker tag when it comes to custom etched welding tags is that it prevents them from bending during the production process.
Annealing the custom 304SS welding tags does bend them too but when etching, you are going INTO the metal, so extra thickness, or gauge, is needed to make sure the tag doesn’t warp.
Of course, we can anneal the thicker welding tags just as easily as we etch into them so we aren’t stuck only doing one process on any given gauge.
CNCROi.com generally suggests that if you have a custom welding tags needing a lot of details on it (brown or blackness), then going up a few gauges will allow us to do this while previously, this wasn’t possible due to heat caused warping.
If you are curious as to how those two anodized aluminium tags found next to this custom welding tag that’s being etched, they were added to the video and photo to give the camera something to focus on.
For some reason, the light is so bright from the metal etching process using our fiber laser tube that CNCROi.com‘s cameras and video equipment have trouble keeping things in focus without many visual references.
Etched welding tags is a slower process than annealing as we aren’t just oxidation the upper surface but actually going INTO the tag, this requires more time as more power is required to dwell in an area to achieve this.
CNCROi.com can etch far deeper if you so desire, but generally, a shallow etching is more than fine when it comes to fabricating and manufacturing super durable etched welding tags.
Depending on the metal density and heat characteristics of the substrate we are working with, CNCROi.com can achieve up to a thousand DPI resolution.
This means that any image, text or font size is sharp, clear and precise as long as you send us a vector file (black and white works best).
Custom production of etched welding tags makes wonderful fireworks inside of our top of the line, industry leading Austrian CNC laser.
This is quite a contrast to annealing where there isn’t any engraving happening, as a result, the heat pushed into the metal produces a lot more potential for heat warping, hence going with a thicker gauge to lessen this possibility.
Your branding options for custom metal welding or machine tags, etched or annealed, stainless steel, brass, copper or anodized aluminium are endless as CNCROi.com can cut them to match the shape of your logo.
We can add rivet holes anywhere you want, however many you wish to match any given project you are working on.
We offer the ULTIMATE in custom metal identification solutions for all our clients!
If you are curious (yet again!), we can also etch into far thicker metal plate, even raw iron using our Austrian CNC laser’s fiber source.
CNCROi.com is CUSTOM, you tell us what you want and budget with volume ideas and we can take things from there to make amazing plates for a variety of purposes, from block plans to metal memorial plates.
To try to reduce the amount of heat caused warping on these etched welding tags, we also push a lot of highly compressed air onto the tag to cool it down.
There are a lot of secrets CNCROi.com employs to produce amazing results that our customers have come to depend upon us to show-off their fantastic work to their clients!
Some of our clients like holes in their custom annealed or etched welding tags because they can rivet it to their fabrications, other clients like to use the holes as reference points for tack welding to their work.
Additionally, the size of the hole can be customized to your needs, so it isn’t just the outside shape that can be optimized to your needs but the inside ones as well.
CNCROi.com works with a host of different materials, not just metal, we can also make custom lamacoid tags, laminate, wood, acrylic and polycarbonate tags for other purposes.
And what’s really cool is that whatever you see on CNCROi.com made out of another material can also be made out of 304SS and further branded to your needs.
This video shows you custom lamacoid tag production for comparison.
We’ve been in the custom business for more than 20 years, helping companies around the world with great service, quality materials and fast turnaround for their needs.
If you are wondering what etching into brass looks like, take a look as these custom brass valve tags we produced a while back.
CNCROi.com works from your specs, your design and material options are as endless as your budget and volume requirements.
Custom etched welding tags always look rough right after production, I know it looks fuzzy and brown but that’s all the vaporized 304 stainless steel that we removed from the etching process.
This is quite a contrast from the annealing process where the result is a dark brown to black requiring next to no clean-up as annealing is a surface process compared to etching which is an engraving one.
Here’s a closer to look at what etched welding tags look at from another angle, again, before cleaning, they don’t look all that focused, precise or high quality but this is just surface debris from CNCROi.com‘s Austrian wide-format industrial fiber laser beam.
Our fiber laser source by the way is from IPG, a world leader in the field, everything in our machine is top of the line, bold through source.
It’s amazing what a little elbow grease can do to etched welding tags, the above picture is “before” and the below, after.
There are a few little fabric fuzzies on the tag as we use a cloth to clean the metal surface but they fall off pretty quickly.
The surface of etched welding tags is very rough where the engraving has happened, compared to the smooth surfaced annealing results we achieve.
Regardless, both results are done using our fiber laser tube, just at different optimal settings for the metal we are working with, in this case, 16GA 304SS custom CO2 laser cut no less.
Using a slightly thicker gauge, you can see the annealing process on a business card made of 304SS, etched welding tags is no different, just a bit slower and focused.
CNCROi.com offers a host of custom solutions for your branding requirements, tell us what you want, we make and ship.
It’s that easy to have custom metal work done just for your needs!
You can now see how the light reflects across these different etched welding tags, what we did “today” is to the left.
While annealing stainless steel second from right, black is anodized aluminium and the last is sand blasted then annealed 304SS.
Fiber laser marking, etching and annealing is permanent, as you saw in the video at the top of this CNCROi.com blog post where I subject all these different types of processes to our industrial sand blaster.
It’s well worth a viewing just to familiarize yourself with the quality of our custom etched welding tags and machine plate options.
There are a lot of other options though, so don’t think of these four options as your only choices.
CNCROi.com makes custom plates and tags using what our clients want, sometimes it’s an exotic metal, sometimes it’s MDF hardboard.
Just for fun, you can see my own business card made out of the same material as the etched welding tag we made today, I will be showcasing the production of this in a future post on CNCROi.com.
We love our metal and bringing custom solutions to our customers and metal fabricators really like our branding solutions for their projects!
And yet another comparison, in this case, annealed test plate to the left, business card sized no less, and to the right, deep etched 304SS that has been sand blasted clean.
You certainly don’t see that everyday! This is what CNCROi.com specializes in!
Need custom welding tags, any material, any size, any gauge, any shape with any finish? Contact CNCROi.com right now!
