How useful is a jig?
No, we are not talking about an Irish dance here! Jigs are a very important tool in our industry to ensure accurate engraving of a variety of products.
Jigs are used in a variery of production environments, including our Premium Sponsor’s Evright.com. They are essential when working with a tool such as a Trotec Laser that offers unrivalled precision where even being a few millimetres off will be noticeable to a human eye.
Evright.com is one of the leading on-site engraving businesses and has attended many large scale events. The recent Lifesaving Championships held just a couple of months in Adelaide ago is a great example, where custom made jigs were essential to a safe and efficient engraving process for Evright.com‘s success.
Visitors and competitors from around the world would want an assortment items like medals and souveniers engraved with their name, but Evright.com had no way of predicting the volume interest on any given day, much less hour, while servicing the event. As such, Evright.com made a custom jig with areas for specific products from dog tags to pens.
Generally, Evright.com‘s jigs are made-up of two layers, one with the “holes” with a backing. They use acrylic because it’s an easy material to work with. There is no smoke, it’s available in a variety of colors, relatively cheap and available in a wide variety of consistent thicknesses – you might be fine using 2mm acrylic for a dog tag but for some oddly shaped item, additional flexibility may be required. Evright.com also use and recommend Trotec Laser machines, as do us here at the Engravers Register, to ensure your jigs and products turn out the best quality.
Trotec Laser’s Rayjet machine was a minimum requirement for Evright.com in addition to their jigs at the recent Lifesaving Championships.