As for me, the thickness of the soda can metal is just right for the balance of the ease of cutting with scissors, strength, pliability, and ease of writing info on it using ball point pen. Most of all, it is free and I can get it quickly. The aluminum food tray I also sometimes use, but they crumple easily that I can’t read out the info written on them after some time.
But all of your suggestions are way better than using a permanent marking pen. I still have aluminum tags of more than 20 years hanging on my trees. The very old ones fell off, but I don’t care as by then I would have intimately known the cultivar already. It is the newly introduced ones that need labeling.
I tried that with aluminum baking dishes and pie tins. I punched holes with a paper punch. Within a year they had all ripped off and had blown around the orchard. Now I have finally located some aluminum window blinds, which I labeled with Dymo embossed tape. I hope they hold up longer.
I’d noticed this awhile back, so I took the camera over today when I had to spray. These of course are just pop can tags, but having timber and fields next to the trees (with the resident Squirrel population being over-the-top) I’ve known for awhile I was going to have to go a different direction regarding tags…
I’ve had the same thing… Even to the point that I can’t read what it was… My brass tags have never been chewed… I’m thinking of spray painting all to black.
Just wondering: How well do those 3D-printed tags stand up to prolonged exposure to the Sun? I know that the 3D printer gunk is not exactly the same as other plastics used for making bags and such, so perhaps they will last better.
I do not have any information on long term survivability of these 3D printed tags. I printed them last spring and they have been exposed to the sun and elements for 1 year now. I can tell you that there is no notable difference in visable appearance from the day they were put out a year ago. If I remember I’ll take a few pictures of the year old installed tags in their element when I get home from work tonight. There are dozens of available plastics to use in the 3D printing process in addition to wood infused plastic and carbon fiber. I should do more research on which types of plastics last longest when exposed to UV and water. Obviously we’ve heard for years that many plastics can last forever and they are the reason that so many packaging types are now recyclable. Some plastic on the other hands perform very poorly when exposed to the elements. Just yesterday I was attempting to move a translucent rubbermaid storage container fill with sand that had been outside since last summer and it just broke all to pieces. It had become very brittle and weakened by exposure to the elements.
Tippy, no I have not. I’m not sure how many people here have 3D printers. I know Scott does but I’m not aware of anyone else. I designed the tags in a product by Autodesk called 123D Design. It’s a bit laborious but I really liked the final results. I still have the original design file of the base tag I could provide. The end user would just have add the text if anyone is interested.
The tag that I based mine off of is located at Customizable Round Dog Tag by ridercz - Thingiverse . Although I made my own version I sort of reverse engineered these tags. If you only have a few tags to print these tags are customizable right from Thingiverse.
3D printers for certain plastics are fairly cheap, and getting cheaper. The most commonly used plastic, PLA (Poly Lactic Acid), is supposed to be biodegradable given the right conditions. It comes in many colors.
I hope speedster1 will keep us updated on how well these hold up in real life orchard conditions.
I used PLA so it probably not the best option for long term tags. It’s very easy to print. I have PET-G and Nylon as well. They would be better for long term.
Before I made the tags I was playing around geeking out and printed a plate to stick on my berry run to identify the varieties. That was before I learned to print I two colors. The black lettering and border were from a sharpie. The black wore off by the end of summer. And they varieties aren’t accurate now since my triple crown died and I removed Brandywine. But you get the point.
PLA should certainly be better then PET as far as UV resistance. PET has an aromatic ring in it, and aromatics strongly absorb in the UV, leading to degradation over time. PLA and Nylon are mostly unsaturated too, so more UV resistant. *edit… no saturation can’t be the major component, in hindsight because PP and PE are unsaturated but not UV resistant.
I’ve noticed some of your tags don’t have dates. I use the dates on my tags more than the variety name. Almost every time I walk into my orchard I end up looking at a tag or two to remind me how old a tree is. I can usually remember what variety a tree is, but the years all run together in my mind and I really like having that information at a glance.
We’ve had several of these tag threads over the years and I always enjoy seeing what other folks do. I’ve tried the aluminum can tags and aluminum flashing both. But it all seems like a lot of work when you can buy 100 of those great little aluminum tags with the cardboard inside that are much easier to write on for about 17 cents each ($17 for a box of 100).
Kevin,
I found out that even with the same brand, those tags come in different quality. Some are much better than the other. I bought a few boxes of that brands. Quality varied unfortunately. I wish I could find the exact description of the good one but I threw away the box after I used them up. Silly me.
Yeah, that is reasonable for a few grafts. I go through a whole box of parafilm and maybe 8 large packs of rubber bands every year. So you could imagine that the costs pile up for me. I’m doing more than a thousand grafts each year and so the costs of tags can pile up.
That is the brand I have used for 3 years now and I must say-at least for me- they have been flawless. They all look like they did the day I made and hung them 3 years ago (4 years this winter). One mistake I made in the beginning was using bare copper wire to hang them with. I choose it because I knew cooper wouldn’t rust, but what metallurgists know and I did not know is that copper and aluminum have some kind of reaction when they contact, which caused a big area to turn black and perhaps even weakened the area. Now I just use insulated copper wire and its all good.
@JoeReal - you certainly have a great point, Joe! Of course, not many of us are doing a 1,000 grafts a year! Holy Cow. No matter what you use its either going to get expensive or take a lot of time to make 1,000 tags by cutting up cans, punching holes, etc. Good luck with all that!
I know this is an old thread, but I thought I would share what has worked for me that is free as well. After lackluster attempts with pop cans (my fault I’m sure) I tried wood tags. They didnt work great either. Now I’m using old license plates. If you make them 1" x 3" you get 24 tags that are thicker aluminum than pop cans out of one license plate. I hammer them as flat as possible and then stamp them. With them being thicker I don’t have to worry as much about heavy wind or coons. Most people I know have license plates laying around somewhere, so if you run out of your own you can ask friends and family for theirs. If you needed to buy some you can usually get them for $1 a piece from an auto salvage. An upside over cans is that if you do your part with the tin snips the edges and corners aren’t sharp. A downside is that you really need tin snips to cut them rather than scissors.
Off of the success of my 3d printed tags that still look brand new i decided to laser cut some tags. These were way quicker to do versus the 3d printed tags. They are cut out of 3mm birchwood. My plan is to coat them with poly to see how lo g they last. One thing for certain they are easy to read.
