Metal Welding Tags: Standard & Custom to Your Spec

Metal welding tags, CNCROi.com produces both mass quantity standard and smaller runs of custom to your spec tags for a wide variety of uses but today we’ll focus on tags that our welding customers use on their projects.

Of course, I’m not just a supplier but also my own customer of custom welding tags, haven recently began to teach myself how to weld, if a total welding amateur can weld a tag to a custom welding table, just imagine how wonderful you can make these look being a professional!

Here’s the video of my making my very first welding project, a custom welding table that will provide me with endless hours of amusement as I try to transform my own welding projects into something that eventually will look just as amazing as the welds CNCROi.com customers produce!

CNCROi.com has both a fiber and a CO2 laser source within our Austrian wide-format Austrian CNC laser, as such, we can make custom metal welding tags using both anodized aluminium and stainless steel.

When it comes to anodized aluminium, there is some added flexibility when it comes to your own branding because unlike stainless steel, the tag never gets hot and thus, may be prone to warping, anodized aluminium welding tags stay cool to the touch and generally, our welding customers prefer these for riveting applications though some do weld these metal welding tags to their aluminium TIG projects as well.

Here are what the end results look like, CNCROi.com produces these type of tags for a large range of projects beyond welding, from machine and valve tags to custom anodized products that our customers require serial numbers on or branding.

We engrave the anodized aluminium custom metal welding tags at 600 DPI so they look nice, and sharp, nothing will ever peel, crack or fade over time.

Now onto our stainless steel metal welding tags, these are a different breed, they can be etched or annealed, and we offer them in a few different options and thicknesses.

Our thinner metal welding tags are 0.02″ or half a mm in thickness 304 stainless steel, about the same as the anodized aluminium welding tag above and these are perfect for annealing, which is a heating process by which we temper your branding permanently on the surface.

The results are an off-black but there are limits to how much we can anneal as some of our customers have a lot of detail and the tempering process can warp these metal welding tags, if that’s the case, CNCROi.com offers a thicker option!

If you aren’t familiar with the differences between etching and annealing stainless steel or other non-aluminium metals, check out this video to bring you up to speed.

Etching is engraving into the metal while annealing is just on the very top surface, each has a benefit but the “cost” of one process over the other is about the same, it’s just a matter of focus as to which happens on what metal type, plate, tube, cylinders, makes no difference to CNCROi.com.

You can see right away the difference when it comes to etching metal welding tags, there are sparks, generally green in color, compared to the annealing which is basically an orange dot going over the 304 stainless steel.

We have welding customers who prefer the etched look and others who like the smooth feeling of the annealed version, it’s totally up to you as to which process we use, I’d easily argue that both have the same durability quotient for the vast majority of applications when it comes to metal welding tags.

Of course, don’t just take my word for it, here’s a video of me sand blasting our stainless steel business cards which are annealed, etched and deep etched so you can see what 80 PSI does to our custom metal welding tags in a larger format.

When we do prototyping here at CNCROi.com, not only do we spend time MAKING stuff but I take it as a badge of honor to also try to see just how tough things really are under extreme examples, that’s why mines, oil and gas and other very difficult on equipment industries trust us with their custom metal branding offerings.

Where the annealing is an off-black, you can see that the etching is a bit more of a grey, it can be sealed to be just as black though for additional esthetic appeal similar to annealing but with extra durability.

Watch this video to see a demonstration of a custom machine tag CNCROi.com etched but then made it look as if it was annealed.

Next-up on the metal welding tag is actually a sizing option where opportunity met need, these are actually off-cuts from a custom CNC waterjet project and I took one look at them and decided they’d make awesome welding tags, especially for a total amateur like me who needs all the “give” I can get.

These have a bit of a cut through on one side but next round of these, we’d cut them to be perfect all around, again, these were off-cuts, they just happen to fulfill another need I had in the shop AND more importantly, as these are used as metal welding tags, that little cut is simply melted along with the other edges of the CNC waterjet tag so you don’t even notice the piercing cut after you are done.

Unlike the custom metal welding tag I made for my welding table where I did multiple passes of etching and then another pass of annealing, these are all done using one pass for our customers, each pass basically doubles the costs of the tag so the dollars fly pretty high skywards.

One advantage of owning CNCROi.com is that I spend all day and many nights playing around with processes to improve the results we produce for our customers across a whole range of materials and applications, these custom metal welding tags are no different.

Make sure you watch the video on the top of this blog posts, it shows you a heat test and even me welding these to my very first project just to show you how durable our metal welding tags really are!

I take a lot of pride in our metal work here at CNCROi.com, it’s great having customers who take the same pride in their work as well, welding is an incredible art form that’s takes endless hours to hone, it’s an amazing skill to have and from first hand experience teaching myself how to MIG (to start), I can fully appreciate how important it is for you guys and gals to BRAND YOUR WORK to get repeat business!

If you are looking for standard or totally custom metal welding tags, be sure to contact us right away so we can make you something totally awesome to match the professional quality of your welds!