Rubber Stamps

[Brian Robison]

Hi Creekers
I have some stamp rubber from Laserbits but I need something that's .250 thick. Anyone have any experience in this field?

[Frank Corker]

Hi Brian, I'm afraid I might not be helping here but, the stuff that you have if it is too thick you could always sand down the back. If it's too thin, boost it up with double sided take to something that makes it the desired thickness. Being on the 'other side of the pond' I can't give you a supplier.

[Joe Pelonio]

Some craft stores sell 1/4" "fun foam" which works as a backing for rubber stamps, and also can itself be engraved for simple shapes, not hard enough for detail though. If you need the actual stamp to be that deep, maybe for stamping on a real soft surface or something, I have never seen it that thick. You might have to find out the actual composition of the rubber and search rubber manufacturer websites.

[Brian Robison]

Thanks, I'm researching now. This is for a printing die so it needs to be the right thickness to be installed on the roller. The die I have is .250 and the engraving is about .125

[Art Anderson]

Brian,

Millenium Marking puts out a laserable grey rubber that mics out at .110" and is the thickest I've seen so far. There may be others, but this stuff stood out because its a lot thicker than the other samples we've been trying. You'd be getting close to your final thickness goal by doubling up...

I don't know the ordering number as someone else ordered it. We were (and still are) trying to find the least obnoxious smelling stuff to use for stamps before the neighboring business fire bombs us out of protest! So far, all I can say is that the "low odor" stuff is the worst of the lot. And that's with about twenty pounds of charcoal filters, HEPA filters and pre-filters. :o

Art Anderson

[Mike Hood]

Stop by your local hardware or auto parts store. Tell them you need rubber to make a gasket. They'll sell you sheets of rubber that make GREAT stamps. (cheaper too) :)

[Bill Cunningham]

Your not going to get rubber to engrave to that depth though, because to keep the shoulders right, you have to do it in one pass, and burning that much at once is going to be really slow, and will really--really stink, it will also make a real mess of the inside of your laser with the rubberdust.. Rubber 'printing' plates are normally vulcanized with a mag plate making the forming matrix used to vulcanized the dieplate, and , or made from uv exposed polymers.. Doing flexo-plates for a printing press on a laser is a lost cause.. Just too slow and expensive. 'Rubber' stamps on the other hand don't need to be anywhere near that deep or thick, and as long you don't mind having your customers wonder where your hiding the skunk, they turn out pretty good.. However, Conventional rubber and the resulting dust will 'still' make a mess in your machine