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What data plates do you guys want??

Mullaney

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Guys, among many other things that we do here in our print shop - we screen print. I have my own MV's out back and some of the data plates - the ones on my M936 in particular look pretty crummy. Sun faded and almost unreadable... We print on aluminum regularly here. Most but not all of the plates on my truck are printed in black. That part is easy enough. Been thinking about printing some for me.

My question to the masses is HOW are these plates really made? They almost look anodized rather than screen printed... (I don't know anything about that!)

The hard part for me would be getting it really right. Setting up the type correctly. Proper size, proper letter spacing, etc. If I had a readable plate, I feel fairly confident that I could reproduce most any plate on a truck. Thing is it wouldn't be a real plate. It would be a reproduction... On a "bob'd" truck that might be acceptable since there isn't a real military plate anyway for a two axle Deuce (for example). Somebody trying to do a complete restore though - it would seem like they are being cheated if I tried to sell them data plates made here.

If a reproduction was acceptable, I don't know that you would want to spend the money to mail your old one to me (just fishing here). If it got lost, then no plate is even worse than a crummy looking plate... And the people who ship things USPS, FedEx, UPS, Airborne, DHL; they all loose stuff.

If you took a picture... A good sharp clear picture and were really good with a ruler and gave me dimensions, I think I could create the art to create the screen to print an aluminum plate.

Question is - is that good enough?

Anybody have an opinion?
 

Mullaney

Well-known member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
Supporting Vendor
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113
Location
Charlotte NC
Did you do already some work for that, for instance for your own MV's?
If so maybe you could put a foto on here?
Not yet. I stumbled across this thread looking for some for myself. It seemed that maybe there was a guy, then maybe there was another guy - then they seemed to fall off the planet. So, I thought I would mention it and see if there was any interest.

I had considered printing vinyl and sticking it onto my metal plates. Then I thought about it a little more and screen printing directly onto the plate would definitely be more "realistic". So, I thought I would try it. Mentioned it here just to see if there was any interest - or to find out if "that would be completely unacceptable" from the MV community...

I could definitely do something though so folks could see for themselves. And, I imagine sometime real soon I would have to figure out how to be a vendor on here to avoid breaking the rules... Right now though, I am just trying to gauge interest.
 
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