Carboy Level/Calibration Sticker Prototype

Williams 728
Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Yes, I have a vinyl cutting plotter. After the cuts are made, excess vinyl is manually picked out and an application tape is applied over the top. Basically I was farming out the work to a local sign shop for the sight glasses but they started getting pissy with me when I asked for priority over first time walk-in customers. Problem solved, I bought my own machine and now I can make all sorts of brewing-relevant decals. Yay!
 
OK, I finally made enough to be able to put them on the site. The final design looks like this:
carboycal.jpg


And I also have this one...

homebrewer.jpg
 
damn a day late and a dollar short I would have loved to add those to my sight glass order I made last friday. i'll just have to order some thing else to justify shipping ;)

-=jason=-
 
Flomaster said:
damn a day late and a dollar short I would have loved to add those to my sight glass order I made last friday. i'll just have to order some thing else to justify shipping ;)

-=jason=-
Click to expand...

Ordered 4 stickers and shipping was $.49.... no justification needed.
 
By the way, someone asked me if it would stick to a better bottle and the answer is a definite YES. The higher quality vinyl I picked up even conforms to the textured area on the ribs and sticks aggressively.
 
Does anyone have a picture of their stickers stuck with the final design?

Just for giggles I'm going to stick some on a growler and do the extended hot PBW soak thing. I do know that even the mild adhesive version is tough to peel off without a razor blade.

I spent all weekend cutting and weeding these so there are plenty in stock in both white and black vinyl.
 
Hey bobby I took an updated pic for you. It was of the original design, but I did mix some of the new pieces at the top. I was wrong it was a 6 gallon carboy. The LHBS store sells both 6.5 and 6, I got a 6. I can snap one real quick if you want of the new design.

IMG_0010.jpg
 
Ended up taking one anyway. Gave me a reason to peek in on my secondary. :D

IMG_0012.jpg
 
jvcjbl said:
Hey bobby I took an updated pic for you. It was of the original design, but I did mix some of the new pieces at the top. I was wrong it was a 6 gallon carboy. The LHBS store sells both 6.5 and 6, I got a 6. I can snap one real quick if you want of the new design.

IMG_0010.jpg
Click to expand...

Bobby, if you aren't comitted to a final design yet I have a couple of suggestions.

I personally like the un-numbered small graduation marks like the above with a medium size indicating 1/2 and a small one for 1/4. If you use the triangles like the above you could probably get your cutter to do the 1/2s and 1/4 in between the full numbered graduations. That way you could easily do 1/2s and 1/4s for every gallon with no extra material, only a little more hand picking time on your part. You could also offer the un-numbered 1/2 and 1/4 graduations separately if you want. Personally I'd go with a full set, but others may only care about 1/2s and 1/4s up near the 5gal mark and up the neck where the graduations vary because of the taper.

I'm glad you're testing the numbers out with different cleaning chemicals, water temps and sanitizers. I think PBW, Oxyclean, Bleach, TSP, StarSan and Iodophor along with hot water would cover 90% of the cases.

One other thought, the one that made me open and read this thread in the first place. First though, I love the graduations for the car boys, especially the white. However, I just went through the exercise of filling and remarking all my white plastic primary and bottling buckets for a 3rd time. I've got a couple of different capacity and diameter buckets and I just find all the factory markings way off and totally unreliable, sometimes upto 1/2 gal off. I used black Sharpy marker to recalibrate the graduations on them and, although I can mark them clearly by hand, the Sharpy washes off after a 5-6 cleanings. So my thought is this, offer the graduations in both black for buckets and white for carboys.

I'll buy a half dozen of each.
 
Thanks for the feedback, I actually do include six 1/2 gallons pointers in the decal now for the entire range, but without the numbers. It also comes with four quarter sized decals. Do you think it's all that practical to mark off 1.25 gallons for example?

I've had a test jug immersed in starsan for 4 days now with no effect. I'm going one more day and then it's going into hot PBW.

I don't have any problem offering them in black.
 
Nice job, I think those are the first better bottles to get them. Let me know how they hold up on the plastic. The growler I had soaking in star san for a full week showed no signs of peeling at all so I think they are probably going to stick around for years.
 
Finally got mine on and a pict taken. I just ordered a couple more sets and will be keeping all the numbering on one side since the first one looks kind of goofy the way I ended up doing it. Thanks again Bobby.

IMG_2640.jpg
 
In the same boat as WPS... finally got the chance to put these on and snap a couple pics. I will say that these look really nice even if I didn't get them perfectly lined up. Thanks for the prototype and I will be ordering some soon:mug:

5483701682_a127bea418_z.jpg


5483702782_a69729e1d1_z.jpg


5483703874_c9b58929a6_z.jpg


5483700370_73ab68cfd7_z.jpg
 
Bobby how are these vinyls holding up? I have a couple new carboys and I need to mark them and don't want to etch the new ones like i did the old ones but Im a little concered that they will come off with repeated hot cleanings.
 
I have a growler with the vinyl applied to that I've been torturing through overnight soaks in hot oxiclean and week long soaks in starsan. So far, not even a corner is lifting.
 
I got a corner to lift.... accidentally wiped it with a terry cloth. Pressed it back down and now all is well!
 
Just curious, was that on the one I sent for free the first time or the ones you later bought? The reason I ask is that I used two different grades of vinyl, the latter and current is at twice the cost for more aggressive solvent based adhesive.
 
Had my decals for over a month, but couldn't get free carboys to come together with the free time to put them on.

Got to it last night. Here’s a warning. Don’t do this drunk.

I’m happy with them, but they could be a little straighter.

Oh, and I put the "1" decal at the half gallon mark twice!
(good thing I ordered extras.)
;):drunk::cross:

CarboyNumbers2lr.jpg
 
Bobby_M said:
What do you guys think for colors? I think the white is obviously visible so I'm leaning that way but would you pay something like $1 extra per strip for an etched glass look?
Click to expand...

Have you done any testing on the etched look vinyl? I'm curious to see how those look.

Have you ever done custom vinyl work? My keezer project could use some custom 'etched' vinyl goodness... I'd rather work with you than a local sign shop, etc.
 
AnOldUR, back when I worked for a sign company (designing the signs, making the artwork that would go on them) the machines that cut the vinyl needed vector art in order to actaully cut them. Any time you had overlaps, you had to tweak the vector artwork so that each color didn't have those extra cuts. Basically, where there was a line, the blade would follow.

For jpg files, they would need to be converted to vector art in order to be cut. If Bobby_M has the software to do that, great. But if you want something custom, you're probably going to be better off giving him vector artwork. Unless you don't mind paying him to do the conversion for you.

Also keep in mind, if he doesn't already have the vinyl on hand, he'll need to purchase a roll. If you're the only one wanting that color, initial runs could be expensive. Unless it's a color/type he's been planning on picking up anyway.
 
Bobby, correct me if I'm wrong, but I imagine custom work would be easiest if you had a vector-based file (.DXF or similar), rather than an image (JPEG, BMP, etc). As for what he would charge, I can't speak to that.

Sorry to have taken the conversation :off:


EDIT: What he said ^
 
I'll just answer all the open questions in one post without quoting.

I've messed with the faux etched vinyl with some samples that Oracal sent me:

Top is gold frosted, middle silver sparkle, bottom is white.
etchedvinyl.jpg


It looks good here but I'm intentionally holding it up to the light. In a normal carboy situation, it's really hard to see so I discontinued the idea for doing the numbers with it. It's also almost twice the cost of white.

On the custom work thing, I'm flexible. It's probably easiest to give me an idea of what you're thinking, size, etc and if I can do it I'll give you a quote. Cutters are all about vector graphics. If you've got a jpg as your only hope, I might be able to get it into a passable vector using Illustrator's live trace but I will have to charge a couple bucks for my time to do so.

If I have the vinyl color you're looking for and you have the vector art, I'd probably charge something like $20 a square foot. That's less than I was paying before I bought my own plotter. I actually do have a supplier that lets me buy vinyl by the yard but of course it's a bit more money than a 10 or 50 yd roll.
 
I'm getting ready to order up the refractometer you sell... Planning on getting those stickers at the same time... :D

Any chance you can get a refractometer with a higher range? I make mead, where the OG can be over 1.150... Also planning on a barleywine where the OG will be over 1.120... The model refractometer you offer stops at 1.120...
 

Similar threads

jaxxzero3
Michigan For Sale Lots of Brewing Equipment (Kegs/Carboys/More) Freebies too!
Replies
7
Views
1K
DaveTF
D
Langerz
First Brew - Question Time
2
Replies
41
Views
3K
Langerz
Langerz
Runyanka
Selling Blichmann Brewing System
Replies
1
Views
818
TaylorBrewed
T
schilsner
2nd mead with Ale yeast, looking for feedback
Replies
7
Views
980
schilsner
schilsner
Golddiggie
Spike Brewing!!!
Replies
2
Views
2K
Rob2010SS
Rob2010SS
SSBrew 300

Latest posts

Back
Top