Magician’s Business Card Laser Etched on Aluminum

This is a business card concept we put together for sleight-of-hand magician Brian Nordstrom. We’ve recently gotten some very thin anodized aluminum and decided to try it on this. The black anodized is an amazingly high resolution material, and (obviously) capable of doing impressive reproductions of a photograph.Unfortunately, at a thickness of 0.012″, it bends very easily and was rather abused in the mail. Unless it’s perfectly flat during lasering, the results are not consistent. And lasering a high percentage of the surface as we did here causes the metal to buckle and warp, worsening the problem. Lastly, when cut, the edges can be wickedly sharp, so all in all, it’s not the business card medium we hoped. We’re currently evaluating thicker versions, including 0.020″, but until we have proper metal working equipment, our capabilities with metal are limited to what we can get professionally stamped.

As a laserable medium, anodized aluminum is wonderful in appropriate applications.  It lasers to a very bright white, no matter what color the anodized coat is and holds up well to abuse.