Color fill on anodized

[Neil Pabia]

I have a request to make about 400 tags for a customer, the only hesitation is that they would like them colored. Will color fill (from laser bits) last on an anodized aluminum dog tag? These are for a Marine themed Bar Mitvah party.
IMG_6215.jpg

[Mark Sipes]

Looking in my copy of LaserBits Catalog ... the color fill is for wood, plastic and stone. Imagine it would work on deep engraved metal. But I doubt it will stick to andoized alum.

[Joe Hillmann]

You could mask them, engrave and then spray paint before pealing off the mask. You would have to do a test though to make sure the edges don't get blurry doing it that way.

[Michael Hunter]

After lasering, dip the pieces in a bath of spirit based dye for a few minutes. (The coloured dyes for wood are good - felt-tip pens work too).
Rinse off the excess dye and drop the pieces (one by one, so the water does not cool too much) into boiling water and simmer for a few minutes.

The above replicates the colouring of newly anodised aluminium - the boiling water seals in the dye.
The engraved part probably won't be quite as well dyed and fixed as the original, but good enough for most purposes.

I have done this and it works. I believe that Dee has also had success with this method.

[Tim Bateson]

I think Dee had some good luck with the method Mike mentioned. I'm not sure any other color fill will hold up to daily ware. Sublimation is the best choice. My choice - Magic Touch Transfer paper ($63) with an inexpensive laser printer ($98), Digital Heat press off eBay ($250). I've been testing for 11 months and I have a couple tags on my key chain that have held up as well as any other anodized tag I carry.

[Ross Moshinsky]

I've never tried the dipping method mentioned but I'd default to outsourcing this order.

http://amcraft-asi.com/dog-tags/ is just a quick link I found off google. I doubt you can match that pricing. I'm sure there are plenty of other vendors who can do something similarly. You're looking at $200+/- for sending an art file to a company. It's easy money.

[Mark Sipes]

Just need to find someone local with a pad printer..... 400 would be a small run with a single color.

[jason harris]

After lasering, dip the pieces in a bath of spirit based dye for a few minutes. (The coloured dyes for wood are good - felt-tip pens work too).
Rinse off the excess dye and drop the pieces (one by one, so the water does not cool too much) into boiling water and simmer for a few minutes.

The above replicates the colouring of newly anodised aluminium - the boiling water seals in the dye.
The engraved part probably won't be quite as well dyed and fixed as the original, but good enough for most purposes.

I have done this and it works. I believe that Dee has also had success with this method.

It's interesting that this works as you are right, this is the dying process not the anodising process that allows the dye to sit inside the porous surface of the aluminium.

I guess it would depend a little bit on how much anodising was done in the first place, if it was very thin then you may have destroyed it with the engraving and dye may or may not work very well.

[Dan Hintz]

I guess it would depend a little bit on how much anodising was done in the first place, if it was very thin then you may have destroyed it with the engraving and dye may or may not work very well.

As long as you're not heavy-handed in your power setting, you won't blow away the anodizing, just re-open the pores. Thickness of the anodizing won't have any appreciable effect on whether or not this works.




I didn't see it mentioned above, but lasered anodizing really doesn't leave a channel to capture color-fill, so it's a non-starter.

[Martin Boekers]

Neil, of the dot
Just a side note, consider kicking up the resolution a bit
to get rid of of the "dot pattern"

Semper Fi! (I'm not a Marine, I know many and believe in what they can accomplish!)

Tim,
are you using silver and transfering a color background to?
If you find a way to transfer metallic colors please share!

There are a few ways I have worked with just not durable.