Thanks David,
Your machine is very like the ones we had at work, only cute by comparison, ours were semi-automatic, pneumatic and the size of a small fridge!
I see the smell-chequer got me too.
It would, I guess, be possible to etch a cliche with several dozen numbers on, and mask the model so that only the required number was printed. It would be a waste of ink, but not much, I guess. The cliches we used were polished steel, around 5mm thick, and looked expensive. I think for our purposes, we’d want to be able to use the standard brass etch, and as thin as possible, given the very limited use they would get. I guess the minimum size of the cliche depends on the ink pot diameter, there are lots of pads & plates / cliches available, they seem to be about 100 x 200 mm or so for a 95mm ink pot. I haven’t found smaller ones in a quick googling.
The pads were extremely soft, but clearly there is a limit to the height & angle of anything uneven. I’d certainly agree that it would cover flat strapping which in 7mm would only be a few thou thick, but like you, I’d be less confident of it working over an upstand which may protrude more than a millimetre or so.
But since we’re in imagination territory, I wonder how difficult it would be to fit an ink-jet print head onto an x-y-z table, and actually print whatever you want directly onto the model. There are lots of mechanisms, controllers & software available for laser, cnc millers, & 3D printers, so that aspect is relatively easy. This thought led me off down another 30 minutes on the w3 which was inconclusive. I think it’s a “yes, but...”, and I have more than enough of those littering my workshop!
Atb
Simon