Looking for material for name plates 0.8mm or 30mil

[kerog777]

My office provides name plate frames, but they want us to print our own on paper. There’s a plastic cover for the paper. I’ve tried 3D printing my own, and found that about 0.8mm or 30 mil is the thickness that will fit in the slot. I was thinking I could get some stock and laser nice nameplates for my coworkers, but can’t find any appropriate material. Anyone have any ideas?

[PhxFrge]

I love the look of two-tone acrylic when laser etched.

[dklgood]

How about a layered metallic cardstock or just engraved cardstock. Very interesting new material: metallic cardstock

[Tek104]

+1 on the two-color acrylics. Inventables.com has some that is .022 thickness. That’s a little smaller than 0.8mm, but the next step up is 1/16 (.062).

https://www.inventables.com/categories/materials/acrylic?utf8=✓&selected_filters[Effect][]=2+color

[evansd2]

A lot of white core cardstock engraves look really cool and could get you great contrast.

First Print--Engraving white-core cardstock

Hi Everyone! This is my very first print after getting the glowforge set up. Since I’m a dev, it seemed fitting to make “Hello World” my first print. Design assembled in illustrator using a licensed stock vector of the globe. I picked up some white core cardstock at the craft store, and thanks to settings GenieSoul and kittski posted in Beyond The Manual, I was able to get a successful print on my very first try . Here is the finished product: [IMG_20190303_162117]

Engraved cardstock fun times

I had a pack of double-sided white-core cardstock from ages ago and never got around to trying it out. Well, I’ve tried it now, and I love the result! [image] The paper has a slight woven tooth to it, which comes through beautifully when lasered. [image] Really pleased with the quality. Hard to believe this was made with a glowforge. [image] Worth mentioning: The vertical banding is not in the art. I suspect it’s down to variations in the paper, thickness of the color layer, changing de…

Cardstock Engraving

I love engraving on all kinds of papers with my Glowforge! These are small cards I’ve had for ages and decided to make a stack to keep track of project’s GF settings in my binder [image]

White Core Cardstock

I was walking around Michael’s looking for flat stuff to laser (as one does). I found card stock listed as Textured White Core. But I could see that a lot of the section included card stock that was not colored all the way through. The color on the edge of the stack was much more muted when compared the standard stuff. [Card Stock Compare] Here are my tests at lasering off the top part to reveal the gooey white middle. Speeds 1000 and 500 at powers 1 through 8. 1000/8 gave the optimal red rem…

[evansd2]

Oh also, raw wood veneers tend to be ~1/42" thick. that works out to ~0.6mm

That means that any number of wood veneers could be engraved as name plates. There are great sampler packs that have lots of colors, like this:

WOOD VENEER 5" x 8" 65 pieces sheets domestic exotic marquetry variety cricut ...

[o-o]

I make my own “two-color acrylic” using replacement picture-frame “glass” from THD. It’s right around that thickness and really cheap. It’s acrylic, not polycarbonate - but you have to check as they do sell both.

I spray the back side one color, then engrave it and spray the 2nd color.

I used this technique to make gold with black text spice jar labels, for example. Pretty sure I shared pics here. Also made some small signs using this technique.

[evansd2]

@o-o

Pretty sure I shared pics here.

Let us know if you dig that up. I might have missed it.

[eflyguy]

Spice jar labels

Many months ago, I bought a set of 30 spice jars, and figured out settings to get a nice engrave on the lids. The problem is, they are not clear in the gloomy cabinet, and despite keeping them in alphabetical order, it bugged me that they weren’t as clear as I had hoped. So I finally bit the bullet, and bought a sheet of 0.05" clear acrylic from Home Depot this morning (it’s sold as anti-glare picture frame “glass substitute”), and reverse-engraved labels for them. Metallic gold, white, engrave…

Might be too thick. I remember it as being under 1mm but it’s officially
“0.050”…

[o-o]

Just found a scrap and it measures 0.9mm with the mitutoyo caliper I keep on the machine. Even my Proofgrade Acrylic varies in thickness by .2mm or so. Take a caliper with you to the store?

So it might work without the plastic cover you mention, which would not be needed for a reverse engrave in any case. They look really nice as the design/text is engraved into the back side.

I think it was $5 or so, so worth trying.

[mmullen501]

I couldn’t find it but would LOVE to see what you did. I do alot of 2-color acrylic engraves and would love to be able to make them myself! Thank you for sharing

[evansd2]

If you meant me, I wasn’t the one who made them, and @eflyguy and @o-o posted links to and pics of their two color paint trick right above this