Two Color Self-Inking Stamps: Trodat 5212
Two color self-inkig stamps are what we are making today at CNCROi.com, for this project, we are using the largest self-inking stmap available, the Trodat Professional 5212.
Just for fun, let’s do this blog post of the two color self-inking stamps in reverse order of production, meaning finished product to raw rubber rather than the other way around at CNCROi.com.
The repeatability of our laser is absolute, meaning, these two rubber stamps are identical but if we had a few thousand to make, it would be the same accuracy across the board.
For these two color self-inking stamps we are making at CNCROi.com, you’ll notice quite a difference between the top and the bottom pictures, that’s because there is rubber soot that built-up over the surface of the stamp as it’s being laser engraved out of the raw Trodat rubber.
When we are engraving rubber, there generally isn’t much fire being produced as we have a powerful extraction system and air shooting down on the work, but when we are cutting, that’s when the fire pops out as you see in the image below.
Any language you can imagine, we can make a stamp for it.
The engraving and cutting processes with the laser at CNCROi.com when I was making these two color self-inking stamps are quite different, the cutting process is a straigh-ON laser so that’s why there is a bigger chance of laser producing fire while the engravig is ON/OFF, as a result, the off means there is no power so the combustion has a chance to escape.
For efficiency sake, I made both of these two color self-inking stamps at the same time, the extra engraving time is minimal this way, so it isn’t a 1 + 1 = 2 but more like 1 + 1 = 1.25 time wise.
You aren’t stuck using only rubber with CNCROi.com.
As we aren’t cutting through the stamp, literally any font works fine as there are no limitations like we’d have if this was a custom stencil, the same goes with imagery, though the more detailed the image, the more of a high quality image we require from you to make said stamp.
Laser engraving is a very fine process, the laser itself is thinner than the diameter of a hair, as such, highly detailed graphics come out fantastic at CNCROi.com for these two color self-inking stamps.
Laser engraving is a very efficient non-contact method, there is nothing touching the rubber, it’s only energy, as such, there is no pushing or pulling through the material as you’d see with our CNC router or other equipment in the shop.
Round stamps, oval stamps, square stamps, rectangular stamps or whatever shape you can imagine stamps, CNCROi.com can make them all for you!
Laser engraving rubber does produce a smell, this doesn’t smell good but absolutely raw rubber smells like dead ants being burned, that’s why at CNCROi.com, I generally like to do wood engraving projects after engraving rubber, so that it gets rid of the smell that gets everywhere in the shop.
These two color self-inking stamps both go onto Trodat Professional 5212s, as a result, these are the biggest self-inking stamps possible, we can of course make bigger ones but they won’t be self-inking.
The bright light you see in the vaporizing of the rubber, the power is consistent on our Trotec Laser because it was designed, both hardware and software wise, for custom rubber stamp production.
Custom stamps can be as tight or loose as you want design wise, the script and curves makes no difference to CNCROi.com.
Laser engraving and cutting rubber is a seamless process, once the design is made in our software and optimized in Trotec’s, then we are ready to engrave and cut exactly what CNCROi.com‘s customer requests of us.
For these two color self-inking stamps, the reason why we can produce both side-by-side at essentially the same time, is because of the precision of our machine and the software that runs it.
The reason you see lots of clouds around the engraving (and cutting areas) of these two color self-inking stamps is due to the pressure created by the compressed air shooting out from the head of the laser, this is important for two reasons, it extinguishes fires that may start from all the combustible material that’s generated by the engraving process and also removes debris as it’s being created by said laser to keep the surface where the engraving is happening clean.
You’ll notice that the laser engraving into the rubber isn’t a straight 90 degree angle, there is a slight order, this is important as this shoulder adds a lot of strength to the stamp which greatly adds to the durability of it overall.
CNCROi.com can create only the rubber portion of your rubber stamp if you wish to keep your current mechanical set-up.
CNCROi.com has engraved thousands of stamps through the years, if you have any doubts as to whether your design will work with ink and so forth, send us the designs and we’ll evaluate it, worse comes to worse, very fine lines are just thickened as our limiting factor isn’t what we can produce generally, but the surface area being large enough to hold onto ink.
When it comes to stamp making, especially when making two color self-inking stamps, the sizing is large in this case but they can be a mix and match of different sizes and quantities, even shapes.
Laser engravig produces a lot of soot and debris as we are creating depth into the rubber, what isn’t engraved, is actually what will be stamped, put another way, what we don’t touch is what will be inked and thus, transfered to the paper.
Need two color self-inking stamps or more? Contact CNCROi.com right now!