Any suggestions for handling this?

[Scott Shepherd]

Had a call from a new customer asking me if I could engrave something for them. It's a prototype part that will go into full mass production at some point. The product is complete, but needs to be engraved. We're in the middle of expanding our shop, so all our equipment is down. She brought it in after business hours on Thursday (I waited for her), and I immediately looked at it and said "What's this coating? Is it anodized or powder coated or what?". She said "I don't know". I said "Well, you've only given me 1 item and I have no way to test it, so I have to have some idea what the finish is if you want any kind of result. She says she'll get back to me on Friday, but she needs this by Wednesday (day after Christmas), and tells me they are closed on Monday. So I get the email yesterday afternoon saying "the spec says it's aluminum, that's all we know".

So now it's Saturday, and I have a couple days to figure this out, but what she handed me is a complete, finished product that has no hidden areas on it. It's a consumer product, and Wednesday, this one item is being shipped somewhere to someone important. Not sure if it's going to be photographed for marketing purposes or tested by a magazine, or what, but I know it's being shipped somewhere on Wednesday morning.

At this point, I'm stumped. It looks a lot like black anodized, but the finish isn't smooth and slick, it's almost like a matte finish anodizing. But, it could very well be some other coating I'm not familiar with. There is a tiny edge, about 1/16" thick on the bottom that I might be able to test on, maybe a dot or something, but not much more than that.

My fear is I engrave it like something anodized and it's something else and then I can't recover. So I'm trying to think how I can set this up so if it doesn't engrave right, I can recover. I thought about masking it and engraving through the mask, so if it doesn't work, then I can airbrush it white, but I don't want to engrave through the paper tape if it's anodized. I don't want that glue residue messing that up.

Any suggestions?

It's fairly small, maybe 1" x 3" with some 1/4" tall letters under the logo.

[Ross Moshinsky]

The process to build that prototype probably took twice as long as they expected yet you're worried about getting it to her the day after Christmas after she gave you essentially one business day to do the job with no information. I'd email her and say you can't risk her prototype and that she's going to have to bring in a 5"x5" swatch so you can do tests.

[Mike Null]

Ross is on the right track. This is an unreasonable request. I'd get her ok to engrave it as if it were powder coated or refuse the job.

[Michael Hunter]

One of the few situations where one of those waivers would be useful - to have in writing that the customer could not identify the finish **of their own prototype** aught to knock any potential legal problems on the head.

Do you get a look-in when the product goes into "full mass production", or will one-by-one engraving suddenly become much too costly (as normally happens)?

In your place I would reject the job unless I had a really good feeling that it would lead to ongoing business.

[Gary Hair]

Unlike the others, I would dive in and go for it. There are only so many ways to coat aluminum and any of them would give you pretty decent results. I would mask it, just to be sure, and laser it accordingly. I don't think masking will interfere with bleaching the anodizing, if that is what it is, and if it's not, then you have options. I just realized that you mentioned paper tape, I would use a laser-safe stencil tape, but you may not have any and given that it's Saturday you may not have any way to get it.

I would send her one last email explaining that since she can't tell you what the coating is that you can't tell her what the results will be when you laser it and since she gave you only one piece, and a very short time to work with it, that you can't guarantee the results. Get it in writing at least.

Gary

[matthew knott]

Your customer isnt really giving you much help, we get quite a few jobs like this,you have to explain (as with all things in life) there are NO guarantees, From your description sounds like it could be Hard Anodise, my advise would be start with a low power, do a run, maybe build up with repeats and ramping the power up with each run. I personally wouldnt compromise my approach to leave a 'plan B', if it works great, if not you cant be help responsible. You really don't need a stressy over Xmas,

[Walt Langhans]

For whatever it's worth...

She's obviously important enough to you to wait for her after hours so... What about engraving something small as a 'test' that could then be covered up by a full engraving if the test goes well? I thinking along the lines of a tattoo. You do a little smiley face to see if the person can handle getting a tattoo, and if they can your incorporate the elements of that smiley face into the rest of the design and no one ever notices there there was even a smile face. If it doesn't work well then she just explains it was part of it being a prototype and the next run will not have it or have it figure out better. As long as it doesn't effect functionality it should be ok for at least the first run hopefully.

[Scott Shepherd]

I've had all day of hooking up equipment to think about it and it hit me to engrave it like it was anodized aluminum. If it's painted or powdercoated, then it won't turn whitish, so I'll just run it 2 more times and cut it down to the metal. Then they'd have their nice, clean looking logo no matter what. That's my plan anyway, plus I do plan on trying it on the lip that's 1/16" wide under the bottom.

I have no idea what the thing is. Looks like a computer but not much bigger than a square coaster about 1 1/2" tall.

We'll give it a shot. I just got our lasers back up and running after 3 days of remodeling. Maybe tonight we'll give it a shot and try our new setups out at the same time.

[Doug Griffith]

Like Gary, I'd just go for it. A Prototype is just that - a prototype. When it gets to pre-production, the final results should equal a production part. I'd reinforce that concept before starting the job.