Knife stencils
- Thread starter opaul
- Start date
Gliden07
Well-Known Member
I have a setup like this. It works good but stencils are only good IMO for 1 go. The stencil tapes are expensive too! But to make 1 off stencils it works good!
chrisstaniar
Well-Known Member
I have a vinyl cutter (silouhette) that works pretty well. The hardest thing I've found is the very small detailed stuff can be hard to get right. Stuff like fonts with thin scripty stuff, details in pics/animals, etc.
Chris Railey
Well-Known Member
Waaaaaaay back when I started I bought an "Etch O Matic" kit and it came with a stencil making kit that used a UV light and some kind of stencil material. It may be worth a look. It was easy to make the stencils as I recall.
If I remember correctly it was Patricia at http://www.img-electromark.com/ who provided good info and how to make my own stencils. They have the photographic stencil material and developer to make your own stencils. I didn't find the stencil material on the website so would need to call and ask about it. Making your own stencils isn't that hard, a small learning curve.
Gliden07
Well-Known Member
Opaul the real nicething with that printer is if you want to number your knives. Like I said the stencils will last maybe 2 times. So if you want to make a series of knives and mark them 1 of 10 2 of 10 etc... it would work great. For your everyday makers mark I think the regular ones would work better? Just my opinion.
That's what I use for someone that wants initials or a brand on a knife...works well for me!
I use this system and think it works well. the stencils only work once, but you get many on a roll of tape. Unfortunately, the Brother 700 has low dpi, which makes the etching a bit "pixelated". I'm happy with it though, but it might be worth checking out if you want a really clean etch.
Drew Riley
Well-Known Member
I bought the P700 with the stencil tape a couple years or so ago. I played around with it a bit, but never used it to mark any knives.
The labels are definitely a "one and done" sort of thing. My biggest issue, as loffman points out above, is that it does have a low DPI, so that small font definitely comes out as pixelated.
Is it functional? Yes. Is it to the standard that I'd want for a customer's knife? No. I suppose it'd be handy for marking personal tools and the like, but I'd probably just as soon use it for printer regular adhesive backed thermal labels and such.
If you want to see the pixelation, you can see my Instagram post here:
I showed a zoomed in and zoomed out photo of something like a 6pt or 8pt font, if I remember right. At first I thought it was pretty decent, but the more I looked at it, the more the pixelation started to bother me. I played around with some settings and whatnot, but could never quite clean it up enough for my liking.
The labels are definitely a "one and done" sort of thing. My biggest issue, as loffman points out above, is that it does have a low DPI, so that small font definitely comes out as pixelated.
Is it functional? Yes. Is it to the standard that I'd want for a customer's knife? No. I suppose it'd be handy for marking personal tools and the like, but I'd probably just as soon use it for printer regular adhesive backed thermal labels and such.
If you want to see the pixelation, you can see my Instagram post here:
I showed a zoomed in and zoomed out photo of something like a 6pt or 8pt font, if I remember right. At first I thought it was pretty decent, but the more I looked at it, the more the pixelation started to bother me. I played around with some settings and whatnot, but could never quite clean it up enough for my liking.