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Machinery to make aluminium bar code labels

I am managing Director of a company supplying bar code solutions and from time to time we want to offer our clients anodized aluminium bar code labels. (in other words, every label different). This probably means that the data to be printed must be imported in a digital format from Coral draw or whatever.

I am trying to find out how much it would cost to equip our business with the technology to make anodized aluminium bar code labels,

Richard Lucas
- Cracow, Cracow, Poland
2000

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2000

Greetings Richard,

One of my customers has me anodize/chromate their parts and they have them silk screened with the information necessary for each part. While this might be a solution, they generally don't do barcoding, but I'm sure it could be done this way without much hassle. Other than that, I know of an anodizer down in Texas that does aluminum plates in the following fashion:

• 1.anodize the base color for the plate
• 2. Apply a resistance material to the base that you want to keep intact.
• 3. Strip the remaining portions of the plate to reveal your required message (for example: you have a 4" x 1" plate that says HELLO on it, with the base/background being done in black anodize, and the lettering would be done in clear, red, etc.)
• 4. Then anodize the coding/letter/message area with the desired contrasting color.

I've seen his work, and it is very nice. I myself know thats one market I'd prefer not to take a stab at, it looks like an extremely large amount of reject potential unless you practice so much at it. Besides the fact that VOC's are an issue with this method from what I could gather.

There may be other methods of going about this, but these are the only two I am familiar with. Good Luck to you

Matthew Stiltner
plating company - Toledo, Ohio