Dice engraving - PVC risks ?

[Philippe Lecomte]

Hi there,

I did some dice engraving recently and i just realized that it could not be very safe.


Dice are in "plastic" and i don't know their composition.


I had assumed that it would be safe... As i cannot conceive the idea of producing a blank dice that wouldn't be laser engravable.

Now, i realize that it could contain PVC or another type of material that is not workable with a laser.

Did you ever face this problem ?

Some advices ?

[Scott Shepherd]

Hi Philippe, you'd want to do a flame test on one of them. It's listed on here somewhere, but I can't find it right now. You heat up a paper clip or metal object, stick it on the die to melt a little bit onto the paper clip, then you put that in front of a torch. The color it burns will tell you if it is acrylic or PVC. Search around the forum for it, or maybe someone else can locate it quickly and repost a link to that thread. It was years ago when it was posted.

[Bill George]

Hi there,
I did some dice engraving recently and i just realized that it could not be very safe.
Dice are in "plastic" and i don't know their composition.
I had assumed that it would be safe... As i cannot conceive the idea of producing a blank dice that wouldn't be laser engravable.
Now, i realize that it could contain PVC or another type of material that is not workable with a laser.

Did you ever face this problem ?

Some advices ?

Why don't you contact the place you purchased from?

[Gary Hair]

Hi Philippe, you'd want to do a flame test on one of them. It's listed on here somewhere, but I can't find it right now. You heat up a paper clip or metal object, stick it on the die to melt a little bit onto the paper clip, then you put that in front of a torch. The color it burns will tell you if it is acrylic or PVC. Search around the forum for it, or maybe someone else can locate it quickly and repost a link to that thread. It was years ago when it was posted.

It needs to be bare copper wire. Heat the wire to red hot then melt a bit of the material with the wire then place it back in the flame. A green tint indicates PVC.

[Scott Shepherd]

Good to know Gary, it's been a long time since I read that and I didn't remember the copper bit. Thanks for adding that, along with the method for telling if it's PVC.

[Philippe Lecomte]

Hi,

I did some tests and all was ok.

It's not ever easy to contact the manufaturer of the product you are engraving.

If you need to test your laserable material, i found this very useful reference that i uploaded on my google drive :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6dmANz9mNjDVUpIVkplRnRVMHM/view?usp=sharing

I hope you'll make good use of it to identify which polymer you are engraving.

Thanks for the help.

Philippe

[Roy Sanders]

Thank you, I found this very helpful.

Roy

[Pete Bejmuk]

Unfortunetly most of the big dice suppliers don't use the same materials each time for all their batches. I've ordered hundreds of dice from one and some of them tested positive for chlorine (PVC) and some didn't.