[manakawari]

I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a metal alternative that can be used for embossing plates...I'm looking to emboss leather and other items and typically the plates are milled from aluminum but my mill is a Roland mdx40a and it's not really made for aluminum and when I mill aluminum with it, it's painfully slow..besides, the nature of my business is sampling so I rarely need more than 3 or 4 pressings so the cost and time for aluminum dies just seems like overkill....I'm also expected to produce samples within 24 hours so that's another reason why milled metal plates are a problem.

I've found some success with using thick acrylic but the acrylic melts in the heat so I can't get more than one or two pressings before its destroyed.

Aside from my Roland mill, I also have several laser cutters/engravers capable of 3d engraving on most materials other than metal so it would be an added bonus if this material could be laser engraved.

Basically themail requirements of this material is that it's strong enough to survive the embossing press and heat tolerant enough not to melt in the press...acrylic seems to come close so I imagine that it wouldn't need a heat tolerance that much higher than acrylic without warping..any suggestions would be appreciated

[Perfect Circle]

Give PEEK a try.
Ketron

[CitizenOfDreams]

If you need heat tolerance just a bit higher than acrylic, then maybe polycarbonate would work?

[manakawari]

yea Peek is super expensive, thats not even an option...polycarbonate i will look into but im not familiar with the heat tolerance of the material, if its just "slightly higher than acrylic" then i suspect i will likely run into the same problem that i experience with acrylic, it works fine for the first couple pressings then it begins to warp...teflon looks interesting but that also is expensive, not nearly as expensive as peek but still over 100 bucks for a .5 " x 12" x12' sheet....for a sheet this size i would like it to be 50 bucks or under...any other suggestions?