Silicon Rubber (Armstrong) Bracelets

[Bill Stein]

Has anybody tried to laser these instead of debossing them? If so, what do you suggest as a starting power/speed setting? And how do they come out? I was thinking that you may have to do them several times, refocusing lower into the silicon each time.

It also occured to me that since they have to be streched on a jig to make them flat, that maybe you could strech them to twice their normal width (thus making the rubber thinner while engraving) and stretch the text out to twice its normal width in Corel and maybe you could do them in fewer passes.

I haven't tried them yet, but I would like to if anyone has been successful in engraving them with the laser.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Bill,

We have several customers laser engraving these bracelets. they work fine one pass with a 30 watt laser is all that is needed. They do them on there rotary attachment. They have a fixture made up that keeps them round and flat they can also hold between ten to twenty bracelets at once on one fixture. They run them in a portrait mode so they only take about one minute each to engrave. The only problem that has been seen is some of the colors have debris left in them once there engraved and require cleaning. Other than that they work fine I would not stretch them because the engraving becomes distorted.

[Chuck Burke]

Mike,
How cool is that? Next question. Where do you find the bracelets?

Chuck

[James Stanaway]

A customer of ours, SpirtBands, will sell the bracelets to engravers. Check them out at http://www.spiritbands.com/.

James Stanaway
Director of Marketing
Epilog Laser
jstan@epiloglaser.com%

[Jeanette Brewer]

How cool is that? Next question. Where do you find the bracelets?

... and another Epilog customer sells them:

www.britt2.com (http://www.britt2.com)


Jeanette Brewer
www.brewersales.com (http://www.brewersales.com)
Epilog/Xenetech Distributor

[Kevin Huffman]

We actually had a guy come in here a couple of months ago about these, we used a M-25w and we ran about 100% speed and about 60% power and it engraved nice. He was doing just names but it looked pretty good.

[Mike Mackenzie]

Chuck,

Most of them come from China. We got ours from Julie of california

www.julieofcalifornia.com (http://www.julieofcalifornia.com)

[Chuck Burke]

Thanks for all the sources......wooo hoooo more fun to be had......

Chuck Burke
American Pacific Awards

[Gail O'Rourke]

Hi,

I am actually interested in getting some bracelets printed up. Any of you guys do this?

Let me know.

[Chuck Burke]

Gail,
I'd be happy to make some for you, but I'm in hawaii....there are probably people closer to you. Did you check out some of the sites mentioned above?

Chuck

[Gail O'Rourke]

Ok, Chuck, if I have to, I will come pick them up.

[Chuck Burke]

Great, I'll have them ready :)

Chuck

[Shaddy Dedmore]

oh, me too, me too... Can I come pick some up? Had a few nice days here... that means rain for this weekend.

soooo, what's the market for these? Most of the ones I've seen has been for charities. Seems like it'd be trouble to personalize. Mass producing seems like the way to go. But then what gets put on them?

Sorry, just wondering. I should make random stops of people I see wearing them and read what's printed on them.

Shaddy

[Chuck Burke]

oh, me too, me too... Can I come pick some up? NO! ( You are not as pretty as Gail. At least I don't think you ar....having never seen you ) [insert laugh here ]
Had a few nice days here... {meaning it stopped raining? }
that means rain for this weekend.


soooo, what's the market for these? { Perhaps the idea is to do them for the charities, thereby increasing awareness of Shaddy Engraving INC. thus increasing your bottom line.. }
Most of the ones I've seen has been for charities. Seems like it'd be trouble to personalize. Mass producing seems like the way to go. But then what gets put on them?

Sorry, just wondering. I should make random stops of people I see wearing them and read what's printed on them.

Shaddy

[Rick Maitland]

Well we are jumping on the silicone braclet banwagon!! I worked with these things all day today. I made an acrylic jig that stretches the band semi flat. There are 10 notches in the acrylic to hold each band in place. The idea was golden but the finished product revealed an alignment problem. The acrylic does not position the bands in a spot that can be duplicated over and over. I'm thinking that a wooden dowl in the rotory with engraved notches wood work much better....but where in the heck would you get a dowl that big :rolleyes:. We have the Explorer 30W and my settings were a bit shocking to me, 100P and 25S. I would have thought it would penitrate silicone much easier. I will also say that the left behind residue is hard to get out of each little letter. Anyone have ideas and settings to give?

[Jerry Allen]

Rick,
Try gluing two disks to a 3.5"x12" diameter extruded acrylic or polycarb tube.
You could score it on a table saw or router, or just mark it with a fine tip Sharpie.
Cheaper: just mark off an empty wine or champagne bottle.

Those numbers don't seem that out of line. Silicone rubber is tough stuff.

[Rick Maitland]

I didnt even think about using an acrylic tube....thats a great idea! Oh by the way I forgot to tell in my last post that WalMart is selling the blank bands for $4.98 per bag with 10 in a bag. They were in the drink isle of all places :o .

[Robert Edwards]

Oh by the way I forgot to tell in my last post that WalMart is selling the blank bands for $4.98 per bag with 10 in a bag. They were in the drink isle of all places :o .

Rick be very careful about using any old band. Not all bands are made of silicone, some formulations have "filler" materials that may burn, melt or as we found out even explode!:eek: Also, beware that they do not contain latex, many folks have alergies to this stuff. A lot of the Chinese companies will put it into the bands becasue it is much cheaper than silicone.

As far as fixtures. We use 2 styles here: 25 slot flat and a 19 slot round. The flat is CNC'ed out of ABS and the round is CNC'ed out of cast nylon. We went the CNC route (pun intended!) to ensure accuracy for the volumes we produce (1000+ per day).

Let me know if anyone has questions, we've been doing this since fall of last year.

Thanks.
--robert

[Nick Napier]

Hi Gail, I'm probley a couple months late but just for your reference, I laser bands. Have done several thousand, so if you still need some let me know.

Nick Napier....woodworknick@yahoo.com

[Kim Maitland]

Hi Nick... I don't suppose you'd want to share with us who your supplier is? We laser engraver operators can not be too cautious about who we buy these things from, as it sounds to me. Thanks.........