Plastic Pen Engraving

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Received a call wanting to know if I can engrave on plastic pens. This is the 2nd call I've had in about a month regarding plastic pen engraving. As far as I know, the laser probably would not work on plastic pens since I have no idea what kind of plastic these pens are made of not to mention no core color and with it just being one it's really not worth my time. I'm used to engraving either wood or metal pens. Has anyone else ever took on a project like this with any success?

[Kev Williams]

Like knowing if the new wood you're about to engrave will turn dark or light, engraving unknown plastics is always a crap shoot. Me, I've had pretty good luck with plastics, but there are some things that just don't take kindly to laser beams. ABS is weird stuff, I have some ABS sheet here that simply turns to goo if you try to laser engrave it, but it does cut okay. And some items branded as ABS have engraved wonderfully.

The only way to know if it'll work is to sacrifice one pen. If it's a cheap pen, buy one and see. If you're lucky, it won't be a sacrifice :)

[Jeff Belany]

Acrylic pens being made these days are fairly easy to engrave. But, they do need to be color filled. They don't work well at all if not filled.

Jeff in northern Wisconsin