Text 30205, 50 rader
Skriven 2009-03-23 14:59:32 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 30061 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
Ärende: License plates
======================
21 Mar 09 13:47, Robert Bashe wrote to Roy Witt:

 RW>>>> As I told him, a 5 ton press doesn't know the difference between
 RW>>>> steel and aluminum when it stamps it.

 RB>>> True, but license plates here are made in small shops that
 RB>>> definitely have _no_ 5 ton presses.

 RW>> I used to own one when I had a shop. It was a bench-top 5 ton press.
 RW>> It could stamp out those plates without a hitch. The only other way
 RW>> to make those plates would be with a hydraulic press or pound them
 RW>> out with a hammer.

 RB> As I remember (it's been a while since I last had new plates made),
 RB> the shops use hydraulic presses to stamp the letters and numbers onto
 RB> blank (white lacquered) plates.

That's a big waste of time. A hydralic press takes as long to start the
process as it does to end it. I guess that's no big deal if it's done in a
prison with nothing but time on the hands of the operator.

 RB> Then they run a roller with fast-drying black paint over the raised
 RB> letters and numbers on the plates to make them (the raised portions)
 RB> visible.

I believe that's the old fashioned way to make them. c1950s.

 RB> Not sure if we'really talking about the same thing. You may mean
 RB> stamping completed plates out of sheet metal, whereas I'm just
 RB> talking about stamping the letters and numbers into blanks.

Here's how I think they're made today. One machine, a 10 ton flywheel
press or larger, stamps metal blanks out of a 'roll' of metal. Meanwhile,
another operation is being performed in a printing press, which makes a
complete plate film, with a sequential number/letter combo, state name,
other things (like Texas has the space shuttle, a cowboy on horseback, oil
darricks, the moon and stars all printed on a white sheet of film. Then
the last operation, the reflectorizor is sprayed on top. Then the two meet
in a third operation where the film backing is stripped and the film is
applied to the metal plate (could possibly meet with and applied to the
roll in the first op). Then a fourth operation embosses the numbers into
the plate. All of this done with CNC operated machines.

                R\%/itt




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