I collect aroma compounds and essential oils that come in vials with screw on plastic lids of 0.5" diameter or larger. I also keep a spreadsheet with various details, keyed to unique consecutive ID numbers starting with 200 and ranging up to about 450 (currently). They live stored vertically in multicompartment cases. I wish I could mark the lids with the ID number (it’s quite difficult to search for one by pulling vials out to look at the labels on the sides until I hit the one I want). Also, the exteriors of the vials sometimes get contaminated with the contents, and I don’t want the collection of closed vials to smell, so I sometimes rinse them in isopropyl alcohol. The labeling scheme has to be compatible with this alcohol.
Ideal would be little shirt-button-sized metal disks stamped with consecutive 3 digit numbers. I could hot-melt glue these to the lids.
But I haven’t found anything close. Labels and tags are generally bigger than 3/4", usually much bigger. Most labels are printed on paper and makers don’t say the ink, paper, and adhesive are alcohol-proof.
Any ideas, fellow Dopers?
One possibility is painting the black lids (which is most of them) white, and then writing numbers onto them by hand. I might have to go this route, but there are a few negatives: I’d have to get somebody else to write the numbers (I can’t write very well due to hand issues); also there’s lots of variation in the lids and I don’t know what paint would work on some range of polymers they might be made of.
I suspect it’s going to be difficult to find what you want ‘off the shelf’
Aluminum foil tape is readily available - Harbor Freight, Home Depot or Amazon - and has a very tenacious adhesive, protected by a release paper. The aluminum is soft enough to take a distinct impression from a pencil or ball point pen. If you have access to a heavy duty old school typewriter, the release paper makes it possible to feed a length of tape around the platen, and emboss the tape by striking a wee bit too hard. Cutting around the numbers to make the circular labels might require some help, or some clever approach to making a ‘cookie cutter’ by filing or sanding a sharp edge on the end of a scrap of 1/2" electrical conduit.
What have you tested? Are any of the little stickers they sell in office-supply stores sufficiently alcohol resistant? I have some I could try, but even if it work I have no idea what brand they are.
Too-big metal tags could be attached to the lid or neck by a thread.
You could write directly on a black plastic lid with white paint/ink/grease pencil/whatever is determined to be sufficiently alcohol-resistant.
Wow, after significant fruitless time hunting, I posted here and also wrote to WatchDogTags on Etsy. In eight minutes – eight! – she wrote back with a quote. I’m impressed!
I just ordered 300 consecutively numbered aluminum tags, 1/2" diameter. It wasn’t cheap. But neither is the collection.
We use the Brother Ptouch label makers for all sorts of stuff at work and they’re pretty decent against alcohol. They don’t stick to everything but that will be a problem no matter what you use.
For the record (since this particular application issue is resolved) I will pop in to say that these little stickers don’t stick well to anything except paper. It’s true you can find a template online and type in your numbers and then run a sheet through a printer, but they won’t stick well to plastic or metal. They will seem to stick for a few minutes, then fall off at the first (or most inconvenient) opportunity.
I’ve found it don’t stick well to smooth plastic, like the tops of your little bottles. Might need to scuff them up a little for better adhesion. But it sounds like you have the hard part of this solved. The rest is just tweaking.
They’re stamped. Online it looks like some of these are just stamped, and some are stamped then filled with ink or paint. Don’t know which the ones I ordered are; I don’t think it will matter for my use. BTW the vendor tells me they will be “hand stamped”; that sounds like a whole lot of work! (and would explain some of the cost) The pictures online all look neat, as if the stamps were all aligned and spaced in some jig, not what I’d think of as “hand stamped”.
Yes, I suspect you are right. I think I’ll use Scotchbrite abrasive pads, which I keep in several different coarsenesses. Just for the tops, though, not the sides of the caps.
I’ve been considering trying some electroetching for marking metals and this is exactly the kind of project that could grease my wheels. I’ve got a 300dpi thermal label printer for making templates and suitable power supplies.
I wonder if anyone here has tried this, I’ve only watched some light youtube about it.
Note that you can also permanently mark metals and other materials by scratching them with a tungsten-carbide scribing tool. There are even vibrating ones.
My father bought one of these vibrating ones in about 1965 and used it on many different things. He even wrote on the exterior bottoms of our drinking glasses in mirror writing so when you finished your drink there’d be something bizarre to read. I thought briefly about this approach for my project.