Printing names onto plastic name badges and elastic materials - equipment required?

[kopbeen]

Dear friends

I am a student from South Africa, looking for some industry info!

I am the chairperson of an organisation that is looking to print name badges for first year students joining our campus in 2011.

I have been asking around, and the cheapest option for us would be to print a bunch of plastic name tags with one company and have the names printed at another. However, I cannot seem to locate a company that is able to print individual names onto a custom-cut piece of plastic.

The problem is that I do not know what kind of company I am looking for. The companies that I have found are either in doming (and charge ridiculous setup costs for each badge!) or metal engraving.

What kind of questions do I have to ask? What kind of equipment does a company that can do what I am looking possess?

Also, I would like to know the same info for elastic materials such as arterial tourniquets - who is able to print them and what kind of questions do I ask?

I will attach a picture of the plastic name badge that we can print at the one company. As will be very obvious, the name is to be printed by a different company in the blank space! As for the tourniquets, they do not have to be individually printed, but our logo is to be printed on each tourniquet.

Thank you so much for your help!

Jasper

 

[smatros]

a solvent / uv flatbed printer
you can also engrave them with laser if material doesn't contain chloride
for lanyards - some sort of heat/transfer / sublimation

 

[akalaray]

Find a Plastic Card printer - gas cards, store credit cards, loyalty cards. They can print varitable data on plastic with Digital press such as Indigo press - then diecut the badges.

 

[rcm355]

The easiest way to produce what you have is to run them on Teslin on an HP Indigo or another digital press that will print variable data. The sheets will need to be thermally laminated (not cold laminated) and then die cut. The die cutting can be done with various machines, but since it is not a standard size/shape you will need to pay for a die charge which that alone is going to be several hundreds of dollars. Because the shape is irregular you cannot print stock badges and then personalize after the fact on a "one off or on demand" basis.

If you switched your format to a standard CR-80 or credit card size you can look at either the Fargo, Zebra, or Datacard machines that can print full color and laminate. For a new one you will pay about $4,500 for the machine and they will cost you about $0.75 each with stock cards and consumables.

 

[jrsc]

If you want plastic name badges pre printed that you can add a name to later you can get screen printed plastic blanks then engrave the name later with either a rotary or laser engraver. You want to use engraving plastic such as romark or ipi.