Cermark quote?

[John Noell]

A contractor has asked me for a quote to mark 300 square stainless steel plates (3" square) with a few numbers and letters. (He does pipelines and they now want posts along the buried lines with these info plates.) Never having used Cermark I have no idea what the costs would be for that quantity. (I'd tell him to try elsewhere but there isn't another laser engraver in Fiji to do it and the rotary pople apparently want too much.) I can handle the Corel and print merge for the payout so I think it's just the time and cost for applying Cermark that I need to know about.

[Norberto Coutinho]

A contractor has asked me for a quote to mark 300 square stainless steel plates (3" square) with a few numbers and letters. (He does pipelines and they now want posts along the buried lines with these info plates.) Never having used Cermark I have no idea what the costs would be for that quantity. (I'd tell him to try elsewhere but there isn't another laser engraver in Fiji to do it and the rotary pople apparently want too much.) I can handle the Corel and print merge for the payout so I think it's just the time and cost for applying Cermark that I need to know about.

.
I think this link give you a average price, but I am not sure about..
.
http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trk...All-Categories

[Bruce Volden]

John,

I assume you have to purchase the cermark? If so it is kinda expensive. Howevere I bought 2 lbs of the stuff way back when it was called cerdec-probably 10 years ago and am still using it!!!!!! Thin it WAAAY down with DNA and apply with a cheap foam brush. For something like what you are describing I would charge $3-$5 ea. depending on the size of the engraving and assuming they are furnishing the plates. Your market may vary tho. HTH

Bruce

[John Noell]

From Norberto's link it sounds like it would take about 4 cans to cover 300 x 3 x 3 inches. At $75/can the cost to me would be about $1 each, so $3 for each sounds okay! Thanks guys!

[Mark Plotkin]

John,

I would not touch this job for less than $10 each. the engraving is the easy part. each piece will need to be set up in corel, cleaned, coated, engraved, cleaned again, packaged or wrapped to keep from rubbing. So the engraving time is only about 25% of the time need to do this type of job. Additionally I engrave at 9% speed and 100% power so the engraving is pretty slow.
good luck.

[Mike Null]

I would be in the area or $7 to $8 for these. There's a lot of cleaning and handling plus considerable set up as I imagine they are all different.

I use anodized aluminum for a similar application here for natural gas wells.

[John Noell]

Good points. However, labor here is REALLY cheap. The Corel part can be done with a print merge so that is fairly quick. These get handed directly to the contractor's hands over so virtually no packaging, just simple wrapping. But I hear it is more complicated than I was allowing for. I have no idea if the government can be moved to accept anodized aluminium (as they say here) but that is a great idea.

[Gary Hair]

What I find very interesting is the quotes people are giving you without seeing the artwork. It's IMPOSSIBLE to give any kind of a meaningful quote, especially on the quantity you are talking about, without seeing the artwork and doing some testing.

My forumula for pricing is this:
$35.00 minimum - if you have 1 piece it will run $35.00

For quantities I carefully calculate the cost of materials (the metal) and supplies (the Cermark) and mark up accordingly. Then I run a test and determine the time to: 1. Unpackage 2. Clean/prep 3. Coat 4. Laser 5. Cleanup 6. Repackage. Without this information any quote is going to be a W.A.G. and not worth the electrons it was delivered with.

FYI - Cermark is VERY expensive by the can compared to bulk. For a job of 300 plates you need to use bulk and spray it with an airbrush. You can control the spray much better and your results will be more consistent than the spray can, not to mention cheaper.


Gary

[Steve C Wallace]

Gary once you have all that info sometimes it is now a SWAG not a WAG.

[Dan Hintz]

John,

I would definitely go with the bulk solution and spray it myself. You would probably use no more than 1/4th of a $125 bottle to do this job... I thin mine 10:1.

[Richard Rumancik]

I agree with Gary - 4 cans at $75 = $300. You will pay much less for Cermark in paste form. Even if you buy the cheapest airbrush it will work better than a foam brush. You will need a small compressor with a regulator.

[Mike Null]

Or a large compressor with a regulator.

[John Noell]

I agree on the airbrush as the less expensive method. I already have an airbrush compressor (as a backup to my main tank type). However, I do not have an airbrush and even getting one here means ordering sight-unseen from overseas. As I am simply passing on all costs to the contractor I am not highly motivated to save him money. If the spray cans are more convenient...that might just be what I do.

[Gary Hair]

Gary once you have all that info sometimes it is now a SWAG not a WAG.

I'm pretty sure you were being sarcastic, but If not, I disagree completely. I know how much I need to make per minute in order to be profitable and that info allows me to make that possible.

Gary

[Bruce Volden]

Maybe I'm old fashioned or just ignorant (probably the latter) but WHY are you folks pushing the air brush technique for this application. I have to ask this only because I have done thousands of cermark applications using only a cheap throwaway foam brush. For instance when I am in the middle of "knife season" I can easily dip my brush into the cerdec and "paint" 20-25 knives with only a 1/2" of the brush wet, dip again and so on. Sometimes I have upwards of 500 knives to mark and it takes all of 40 min. to apply the cerdec. The biggest setup is getting everything laid out and ready to paint. Also did I mention NO CLEANUP just throw them away (you can't clean them anyway as the DNA eats the foam up if they sit too long!)

I'm thinking air brush, overspray, cleaning tips, noise......and basically I'm lazy

Bruce