MAKING A NAME FOR ITSELF

As Brampton Nameplate Inc. president Dick Maybee points out, almost every injection molder must buy nameplates or labels of some sort. His company’s reputation for making high quality and diverse lines of product has helped turn this demand into sales that have reached a self-sustaining and fast-growing volume. The company’s customer list includes many brand names, such as JBL, Mirage, Thule, Jacuzzi, Rocaille and many others.

Maybee began his career as an entrepreneur in 1975 when he left Atlas Chemical to market and sell the Polygauge Laminate Micro Measurement instrument. He got into the nameplate business in 1991 when a friend asked him to make a nameplate for a speaker.

“Our business has really taken off in the last few years,” Maybee reports. “Two years ago we hit the $1 million mark in sales. This year we’ll be at $2 million in sales. That translates to over eight million nameplates a year.”

Maybee says the company is chiefly a screen printing operation. The current product line includes high-end trademark labels, bar coded nameplates and mylar overlaminate labels which are used for computers, spas, sound system speakers, hand tools, furniture, bathroom fixtures and a host of other products. The company incorporates a variety of plastic materials in its processes, including vinyl and polycarbonate sheet, acrylic adhesive and urethane.

The company uses a process called Crystalart, for example, to create nameplates with a clear, non-yellowing polyurethane lens. The base substrate is a printed 2 mil mylar with a permanent acrylic adhesive backing. A “dome” of two-component urethane is placed carefully over the mylar and the nameplate is cured in a heat oven.

The company has six screen printers and three laminators. It has recently ordered a new Italian-made die-cutter, and as well has placed an order for a new urethane doming machine that can dome six nameplates at once.

Maybee reports the company is able to produce extremely high quality and detailed graphics on its labels and nameplates. This technical capability is due in part to its capacity to generate film to make screens using a state-of-the-art exposure machine. Maybee says the computer-controlled unit controls film exposure by light units, rather than by time, eliminating exposure variation which occurs as the light unit ages.

The company’s web site is www.bramptonnameplate.com