Minimum quantity

One plate

No plate, screen or tooling charge · $200 minimum order

Stock

Acrylic / PC

Clear, black, white, colors · up to 2 in thick

Machined to

Your DXF

Holes, slots, cutouts, countersinks, radii

Turnaround

1-day quote

Ships in 5–10 business days, nationwide

Screen-printed polycarbonate overlays are excellent at volume. The economics come from amortizing a screen or a die across a long run, which is why the quote for a short run arrives with a plate charge, a tooling line and a lead time measured in weeks. For a machine builder who needs a handful of placards per build, or a lab relabeling a bench, that math never closes.

So the plates get run off a desktop label printer and taped on, and they look exactly like that on a machine you are about to invoice for six figures — or the machine ships without them and the gap turns up in an audit. We are not an overlay house. We make the rigid printed plate, one at a time if that is what the build needs.

Overlay house, short run

Screen or die charge, minimum quantity, weeks of lead time, a change order to move one hole.

Rigid printed plate

Your DXF, your artwork, quantity one and up, no tooling. Move a hole and we re-run the file.

Nameplates & equipment ID

Serial and spec plates, asset tags, model and voltage plates, capacity plates. Sequential numbering and per-unit variable data on a run, so plate seventeen is not plate one with a sticker over it. Where the plate has to outlive the machine, the same data goes on laser-marked metal instead.

Dead-front panels & faceplates

Printed graphics with cutouts routed for switches, e-stops, displays and connectors, countersinks where the fastener has to sit flush. Dead-front effect on smoked or tinted stock so an indicator only reads when it is lit.

Operator & safety signage

Instruction panels, lockout points, hazard placards, arc-flash and laser warnings. Send your ANSI Z535 layout and we print it to your artwork on rigid stock — we produce the plate, you own the wording.

Lab & facility labeling

Bench and instrument labels, rack and bin identification, door and room placards, gas and utility markers. The bulk relabel that has been on the facilities list for two years, done in one order.

One

The ink goes behind the sheet

We print the artwork mirrored on the back of clear stock and flood white behind it. You read the graphic through the material, so the wear layer is the acrylic or polycarbonate, not the ink. Wipe it down, scuff it with a glove, drag a wrench across it — the abrasion lands on the sheet. A face print on a machine panel is a different lifespan entirely.

Two

The holes are machined, not drilled

Cutouts, holes, slots, countersinks and corner radii come off the CNC to your DXF, on the same file that placed the print. Hole pattern and graphic share an origin, so the legend lands where the switch lands. Hand-drilled plates crack at the boss and never line up twice across a run.

Three

It mounts the way you mount things

Through-holes for screws, countersinks for flush fasteners, standoffs where the plate stands off a panel, or a clean back face for VHB tape. We fit the hardware before it ships, so the plate arrives ready to mount. If it needs a bracket or spacer to sit right, we print that in-house from the same file set.

1  Send

Artwork, the DXF or a dimensioned drawing, material and thickness, quantity, and where it ships.

2  Quote

One number for the finished plate, within a business day. If a hole is too close to an edge to survive, we say so before you order, not after.

3  Proof

A PDF proof with the cut path and hole pattern drawn over the artwork, at scale. You approve it before a sheet is loaded.

4  Ship

Printed, machined, masked and packed flat, with a packing list your receiving department can match to a PO.

Geometry

A DXF at 1:1 — tell us inches or millimeters. Outline, holes, slots and cutouts on their own layers, with countersinks called out. A dimensioned PDF drawing works too; we redraw it and put the CAD on the quote as its own line.

Artwork

Vector PDF, AI or EPS at 1:1, fonts outlined, CMYK. Name brand colors by Pantone and we match on the proof.

Margins

Keep text and fine detail 0.125 in inside the cut edge and 0.25 in clear of any hole. Extend background color 0.125 in past every cut edge so nothing shows white at the perimeter.

Second-surface

Send the art the way you want it read — we mirror it and lay the white behind. Say if a window or indicator area must stay unprinted.

Replacing an existing plate?

Mail us the old one. We measure it, rebuild the geometry and send the proof back — usually faster and more accurate than reconstructing a drawing from photographs.

Can I order one plate?

Yes. Quantity one and up, with no plate, screen or tooling charge. There is a $200 minimum order, and setup appears as its own line on the quote — so a single plate costs what a single plate costs, and a run of two hundred gets the per-piece number.

Is this a UL 969 label or a rated overlay?

No, and we will not imply otherwise. These are rigid printed plates. If your application requires a UL 969 recognized label, a rated membrane overlay or a certified marking, that is a different product and we will tell you who makes it. We state what we have tested and nothing else.

Will it hold up on a machine?

Second-surface printing puts the ink behind the sheet, so handling and cleaning wear the acrylic or polycarbonate rather than the graphic. That holds up well indoors and in light-duty industrial environments. For solvent exposure, washdown or outdoor weathering, tell us the environment and we will either test to it or say it is outside what we will stand behind.

Do you do ANSI Z535 safety signs?

We print your layout. Send the artwork in the format your safety review approved and we produce it on rigid stock at the size and mounting pattern you specify. We fabricate the plate; the wording, header and hazard classification stay yours to own.

Can you do metal instead of plastic?

Yes. A 30 W fiber laser marks anodized aluminum, stainless and similar metals in-house. The mark is a change in the metal itself rather than a coating on top of it, so there is nothing to abrade off, fade or dissolve — which is the right answer for solvent exposure, washdown, high heat or a plate that has to be legible after a decade. Say what the plate has to survive and we will point you at the right material rather than selling you the one we happen to have loaded.

Can you match plates we already have?

Mail one in. We measure the geometry, rebuild the file and send a proof at scale for you to check against the machine before anything runs.