Legend Tags!!!!

[POWER_PACKED]

HI GUYS - I Know this is off topic. Electrical panel legend tags, do you guys out source them? or does your working place own one. I asked for a quote for making plastic engraved legend tags black text on white plastic and it will cost me 470$ For 68 Legend Tags the Biggest size is 2.25"X2.25" and the smallest is 0.5"X2". I know probably the plastic it self would be 10c of the cost per piece. Isn't that really expensive thu? :tod: I searched around and I found pretty fancy computerized engravers for around 2500$ I bet it will pay off in the future! What are your thoughts? Do you recommend a certain type of engravers? What do you use at your working place? Thank you.



Regards,
Y@S! :site:

[rsdoran]

Most trophy shops can make them for you at a reasonable price, never talk to an electrical supplier. In TN we could get them done for dollar or 2 a piece depending. If you do ALOT of these, thousands or more a year, then you may want to look at something.

[Terry Woods]

Ron is absolutely right!

Talk to a Trophy Shop... NEVER talk to any other type of vendor about this.

[TConnolly]

I've used trophy shops before, but the panel builder house I currently use has an employee who does the labels out of his garage at home, so I use him, he is very price competitive and knows exactly what we want. But since most people wont have access to that, I'm seconding everyone elses recommendations: go to the trophy shops.

[Ken Moore]

I worked for a very small shop that bought a small engraver to produce there own tags. It takes a little practice to get the hang of it. Then if you don't use it for a while, you have to re-learn the process again. In the end we started farming the tags out again.
We wasted to much time re-learning every time and we scrapped a lot of blanks. By the way the blanks were not a cheap as you might expect, this may because we bought in small quantities, boxes of 100 or so.

[brucechase]

We also bought an engraver to do our own tags and it was a disaster. It seems that once a couple of people saw it, then engraved tags were made for everything (car liscense plates, desk names, key chains). Stock was getting depleted quickly and I wasn't even making tags yet. Then one of the night shift guys who just "knew everything" ran the spindle into the table and essentially destroyed it. I'm not spending the money to fix it or get a new one. I use a local trophy shop now - just like everyone else. I also use a Brady IDXpert with the 1/2" outdoor vinyl to mark boxes and field devices. I like this better than engraved tags for the field. It tends to stick very well and it is easy to update the field devices. Panel, I try to use engraved.

[Rick Densing]

Panel, I try to use engraved.

I do the opposite. On the panel I use aluminized, computer printed tags. I can get a lot of information on it, including a full description of the device. I figure that those tags are pretty well protected.

For the field, we used to use metal tags. We have our own stamper, but all we would get on it was the I/O number. Plus, a guy would spend a better part of a day making them for each machine.

We have since gone to the plastic engraved tags. We also get them at a trophy shop. They also stock and engrave plastic or metal PB legend plates.