Reuse of Cermark

[Zlatko Kursar]

How you reuse Cermark.
I clean plate with DNA and sponge, but that's pretty inconvenient.

[Mike Null]

For me it's not worth the trouble.

[Mark Sipes]

How are you applying the Cermark currently.. air brush, areosol can, tape ? Cermark will come off with just water and then you can wipe haze off with DNA. and save water solution in glass jar to evaporate water to leave powder for reuse..... but I am with Mike....."not worth the trouble" unless you have an airbrush and or use a ton of the material........I'm more worried about what it does to fish........

[Chris DeGerolamo]

Don't. It's not worth it. Roll the wastage into the quote for the work and move on.

I speak from experience.

[Andrea Weissenseel]

you can wipe it off dry with a little sheet of silicone and keep the dry powder to dillute it with either DNA or water, I'm with the others though it's not worth it

[Gary Hair]

As others have said, it's not worth the trouble. When you get right down to it, the cost of the amount you wash away is going to be negligible, compared to the amount you should be charging anyway. I have one job that takes a few dollars worth of Cermark and I charge the customer several hundred to mark their parts. For my time, I'm not going to try to salvage the Cermark for a few pennies when I could be doing something else more productive - like washing the cat or de-fleaing the dog...

Gary

[Bill Cunningham]

Spray your parts in a small acrylic spray booth .. When done just scrape it off the plastic with a plastic razor blade, and throw the scrapings back into the bottle with a little DNA if needed.. I salvaged my Cermark from a fairly large job, and have not gone back to the original source in months. In that time, have done a few thousand dollars in marking with just the salvaged stuff.. I charge $3.50 per sq inch with a 5 sq inch minimum for domestic jobs, and a 10 sq inch min. for commercial jobs. Plus what ever it costs for art prep.

[Dee Gallo]

If you are spraying with an airbrush (not the can) you should be able to control the spray so that there is minimal waste and there would not be any point in trying to salvage the tiny amount you might scrape off. Not worth the time and effort. If you have enormous overspray problems, you should learn to handle your airbrush more efficiently. I do pour any leftover Cermark in the airbrush cup back into the jar, though, rather than rinse it away.

cheers, dee

[Zlatko Kursar]

Thanks to all for information. I use airbrush. Now I have a job where is large plates and there is a lot of used Cermark so I think to save it.
For small jobs I wash it.


P.S. Sorry for my english.

[Rodne Gold]

We also spray in a small booth and recover a lot that way , regardless of how you control your airbrush , often a large plate needs a very even thin coat and you get overspray.
We have jobs where a whole plate needs coverage and the text on them can be variable , ie can only cover a small part of the plate or the whole plate. I recover unused stuff by brushing off the plate before rinsing it ,and the first rinse is a "dribble" rinse , we recover from that rinse too. These are production items where we do 100+ at a time.
Bear in mind , prices of cermark here can be almost 2-3x what it is in the US and I have the "cheap" labour to do the recovery.
We don't bother much if the quantities are small .. like 3 or 5 items , as you CAN charge a decent price , when it comes to production qtys , where we are competing with YAGs and cheaper marking methods ....EVERY "saving" allows you to be competitive..