Re:poor man's decal

We’ve used inkjet printable, peel-and-stick vinyl, covered with water/UV protective film similar to that Avery stuff.

IIRC I bought it from a custom motorcycle place, but it’s widely available.

Nowadays we get the Chinese box supplier to laser-engrave the labels into black powder coat.

Makes lovely white on black, without exposing the metal surface.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Hot laminated will stand up to a lot of abuse provided that you don't punch any holes through it (might be an issue on a front panel). If you glue only and the seal is good then totally weatherproof.

Staple it through the paper and water ingress will be a big problem. You could punch the holes out oversize in the paper and then cut only laminated plastic to plastic (or print onto laser printer plastic).

You can buy waterproof laserprinable clear and white self adhesive plastic material from Avery or (other vendors). A4 is easily available.

You might have to piece it up from 2x A4 though as I expect A3 will be extrortionate and an A3 colour laser printer even more so!

Some shop sign production folk might be able to do you a special deal if you wanted enough to meet their minimum quantity requirements and provided them with the self made artwork in exactly the right format.

That is how signs for one of my hobbies get done as foreigner jobs at a sign manufacturers using what would otherwise be waste offcuts.

We use our Boss laser to do the art onto blue anodized aluminum boxes. It looks great. The art look nice soft white but is electrically conductive.