Measuring & Focusing Cards: 0.05″ Multi-Colored Anodized Aluminium
Although the vast majority of the projects I do here at CNCROi.com involve no filming or photography, when I make these blog posts and videos, I have ongoing issues with focusing due to the bright lights and reflection of some materials.
As a result of these issues, I’ve been using vineyard locators that I made a while back to help, and they really have but then I tried some oxidizing tests on some of them and they never came back clean as this blackens aluminium.
Here’s what I have been using, and they have been great, but its time to move onto something more colorful and useful (for my application).
CNCROi.com makes lots of custom tags in various materials, lamacoid to stainless steel but I wanted something colorful this time around instead of always just “blue” so I made these measurement and focusing markers in a few different ones to spice things up a bit.
The design ideas that can be applied to these colorful anodized aluminium cards are endless, just in this blog post you see four different uses of the same cards…
- amazingly durable and unique business cards
- time-saving location markers for vineyards (or anything else in a warehouse for that matter)
- custom and accurate measuring guides for thickness and length
- camera focusing aids
… and we’ve done way more other ones too.
While I was filming these anodized aluminum measuring & focusing cards being engraved, I of course hit focusing issues due to the extremely bright lights that happen when vaporizing off anodization.
It’s an almost blinding light which is amazing in itself as just “light” is doing the work when you think about it.
Another aid I use when making these video demonstrations that help tremendously is the big yellow square you see in these photos, that does wonders but quite often, it just isn’t enough for the camera which just causes a big blurry mess.
It’s fun showing what CNCROi.com but not when it’s just all out of focus!
I did slightly overblown the power on these cards on purpose, as I want them to have as much contrast as possible to their base anodized coat color, these will be used for measuring but really, FOCUS is the ultimate goal.
It’s really nice to have various units of measure as some people prefer inches, others mm and through the years at CNCROi.com, I’ve become comfortable with both.
The metal plate you see below the anodized aluminum measuring & focusing cards is actually from another demonstration I did a while back, it’s big and heavy and with the air compressor and extraction system going on inside the laser, something is needed to prevent them from literally floating away.
Aluminium, especially at these slight thicknesses, easily floats when you put enough air pressure down on them and it seems underneath, they are incredibly durable but also light weight which makes them ideal for business cards regardless of the design or color you want.
In case you are wondering, yes, the measurements on these anodized cards is totally accurate, as is my CNCROi.com logo in the center.
This will help a lot for future demonstrations as it helps you get an idea of how big or small items are that I make videos and photos of here in the shop.
There is a slight dust forming on the top of these anodized aluminum measuring & focusing cards, that’s just vaporized anodization that settles on it during production.
It’s no different from soot from wood or the thin layer of metal powder that builds-up on our stainless steel plates when we anneal or etch into them at CNCROi.com.
Anodized aluminium can be made into any size using any thickness and shape you want, for instance, here’s a coaster that I laser engraved earlier that’s round and used for custom coasters, which is something we also have in stock at CNCROi.com.
The applications for anodized aluminium never really end, they are superior to stainless steel in that they are light weight, just as durable (comparatively speaking) and more cost-effective in volume.
Stainless steel is superior as it can be directly welded to other steel (you can use rivets too) and is more durable than anodized aluminium, especially when deeply etched.
So your application will dictate what direction to take when it comes to which material best suits your needs, budget and volume requirements.
The engraving of anodized aluminum measuring & focusing card is always an off-white and using less power helps to retain the color of the anodization as, if you want the engraving to be the same color as the anodization, we can leave a tint by not totally vaporizing it off.
CNCROi.com‘s offerings are second to none, whether you need a thousand different machine tags with unique serial numbers and customer information or just a few to hand out as business cards to very select customers, we are here to help make it happen!
Each material has a positive and negative to it, so when it comes to material selection, it comes down to which material has the most positives on your side relative to negative attributes that you don’t want.
Another thing CNCROi.com makes, generally using anodized aluminium are pet tags, yep, Fido needs identification tags and we can make it for them!
There are endless opportunities with anodized aluminium to add a little color to your life or corporate needs, from custom name badges, security badges and signage through to whatever you can think of, CNCROi.com is here to make it happen!
For the ultimate contrast, I find black anodization with off-white engraving to come out the best but as you can see from these photos, they are all pretty clear and easy to see that something was done to their surface using our Austrian industrial wide-format laser.
In larger production runs, keep in mind that there can be some variance in tonal color, it’s minor but it is there, so don’t bother trying to match anodization to any specific Pantone color, unless you wish to pay through the nose.
Most people think of primary colors, like red, green, blue, black and so forth, specific color grades aren’t a good match for anodization unless you have a MASSIVE production run.
Here are the finished colorfully engraved anodized aluminum measuring & focusing cards, they all look great, will last a long time and will make appearances in many CNCROi.com videos to come.
Taking a closer look, you can see how clear the engravings are – do keep in mind, there is some image optimization on these blog posts, so that’s why they may appear a little blurry.
Here they are again from another angle, amazing looking anodized aluminum measuring & focusing cards!
If you need some custom anodized aluminium cards or tags, contact CNCROi.com right now!