Traffolyte material is also known as “Abet Hard Laminate”, “Rigid Laminate” or “Phenolic Laminate”.

What is Traffolyte material?

It is a hard, high-pressure product made from layers of paper and melamine and has a hard phenolic resin core. It is usually a glossy 3 ply rigid material with a contrasting core colour. For example, white with a black core and another white layer underneath. There is a large colour range as with most other engraving materials. Due to its rigidity it can be prone to breaking and chipping over time, especially when used outside. There is no flexibility within the material so any movement it may incur can cause this. For example, when attached to fences around substations using cable ties.

Can I use labels made from Traffolyte material outside?

Traff is recommended for internal applications only. However, it has been used within the engraving industry for many years as the ‘go to’ engraving material.

This is because it was originally the brand name, think of how we HOOVER the house. Hoovering wasn’t a thing. Vacuum cleaning is the actual process, but due to Hoover’s huge presence in the market for so long it became adopted as the process, as well as the word used to describe the implement used. Rather than just the brand name of a vacuum cleaner. The material is actually now ‘ABET hard laminate’ rather than Traffolyte. But most people think of traffolyte labels to mean all engraved labels. Therefore your customers will often specify ‘traffolyte labels’ when they just mean ‘engraved labels.’

In our experience, many engravers don’t actually ask their customers if the labels are for internal or external use (we don’t tend to ask either but more on that later). Which I find peculiar if they are using traff (we are going to stick with that word to save confusion, as we know everyone knows it), because they shouldn’t really be advising it for external labels.

So what happens if you use it outside? How long does it last?

Well as we have established, it isn’t a UV stable material (especially the metallic colours), hence the suppliers aren’t going to guarantee it for ANY period of time outside. Now, I have recently looked into material usage again as one of our customers needed a quote for labels for 40 years and it was a project that was going outside. I already knew I couldn’t get a material to be guaranteed for that long but we needed to see what the best option was.

Their customer had specified…you guessed it…TRAFFOLYTE!

We’ve been in this game for a looooooooooooooong time now so I was able to say NO, don’t do it, right from the start. But their customer has heard of traff so that’s what they wanted. This lead to me a further investigation to allow me to confirm what I originally thought, which was traffolyte isn’t an option and our material has a long expected lifespan for exterior use.

The reason that material manufacturers are reluctant to give an exact timeline on the lifespan for exterior use of materials past a few years is an interesting subject.

The TWO main reasons are these:

Everyone has differing levels of acceptable when it comes to fade. If you think about it we all have different levels of acceptable for everything so it’s hardly surprising really. Some people would be complaining the second the original colour changes and others would be happy with it being far more faded than the below picture.

The material degradation is different depending where you put the labels. Some engraved labels will go to Dubai and some to Scotland, add the proximity to the sea into the mix and you have a vast difference in elements. But even if we ignore the huge extremes mentioned above, some labels will be put up on exposed walls which often face the sun, wind and rain. Whereas others will be protected, to a certain extent, by walls or overhangs on buildings.

Hence it is very difficult (impossible) for the manufacturers to put a blanket timeline on the lifespan of material outside. The good news is that your labels are likely to be not only readable, but good quality, well past the guaranteed time-scale stated. That doesn’t escape from the fact that traff isn’t an external material at all!

Obviously we have all seen labels outside that are traffolyte, apologies because you will see them EVERYWHERE you go now, it is an occupational hazard for all in the industry already, so welcome aboard with that. But they are often faded and old. When we see the labels we don’t know how old they actually are in most cases, so we just assume that they are older than they perhaps are. That’s due to the fading of the non UV-stable material that has been used outside. Often also due to the font used, again more on that later.

What do I mean by faded?

You can see on the picture, that there has been fading on the red label. But also more worryingly, the red colour is rubbing away at the edges. Now, if that continues you wouldn’t actually be able to read the text as it is also white. Not ideal in this case because it is for instructions in the event of a SF6 gas leak!

Can I laser engrave Traffolyte material? – If you want to…we wouldn’t!

Traffolyte material has been a favourite for traditional rotary engraving methods for many years. It has the ability to withstand high temperatures, therefore it was historically the ideal choice for the electrical, engineering and food industries. With the explosion of laser engraving, many material suppliers suggest that you can laser engrave Traffolyte. But, due to the thickness of the top layer it doesn’t produce the same results as the micro laminates. This subsequently results in lower quality labels.

The thing I have always maintained is why would anyone want to spend time building a control panel for example and then but a poor quality label on the front. It leads to people thinking your panel is poor quality too.

You also can’t laser cut it so you have to cut it with a saw or guillotine. This slows down production times, therefore, you guessed it, increasing the lead times across the industry. We all remember the quoted 6 week lead-time, which works for just about nobody.

Visual problems with mechanically engraved labels

Too thin?

When you mechanically engrave labels you need to use a cutter. You need to select the right thickness to give your text the right weight. This improves readability, particularly at distance. Whilst we appreciate that, at times it feels like the world has gone mad. You no doubt feel that you have to put warning labels and signs on everything these days to protect yourselves. Such as ‘the contents may be hot’ on your McDonald’s coffee. I’m sure I won’t be the only one who is not impressed if my coffee is cold after all.

But let’s just assume you are labelling something because the message needs to be seen. Then it probably needs to be seen from a decent distance. Further reading from The HSE on Warning Signs here, should you be interested. The picture shows a label that may well fit the height requirements on text but it could be said that the text is a little on the thin side. That doesn’t happen with laser engraved labels. That’s because the laser engraves standard text from true type font families, such as Arial (which is our standard). 

Too thick?

Often, mechanically engraved traff labels look older because of poor quality cutters and old fashioned font use. But as you can see from the yellow label pictured, the yellow top layer is quite thick so it gives a less crisp look than the newer laser engraving laminates, whilst being quite good for a mechanically engraved label, because of the font (which is Helvetica – I didn’t make the label but I just know). If there weren’t speech marks it would be even better, the cutter was too thick for those.

If you look at the black label below, yes that’s right, in the same picture (the one you may have not noticed). You can see a very old label, it highlights the point above that traff will survive a long time but does lose its condition over time. The white text would probably clean up a little to improve readability  but the lack of flexibility does make it prone to chipping.

What do we do differently?

As you may know, we DON’T use traffolyte, we use exterior grade UV stable 2 ply flexible laminate as standard (that is why we don’t ask if your labels are going outside). It is laser engraved and laser cut. It has many benefits, including that the text will be identical on every label. Even when engraved at a later date to match previously made labels. The top layer is also very thin and therefore has the crisp appearance of a printed label from a distance. Whilst having the longevity of engraving as won’t rub off in time.

The laser cutting element means we can produce labels quickly even when added elements such as lamp holes. Therefore bringing your lead-time down dramatically.

Our engraving laminate is also recyclable but more on that next time

If you are still with us, and want to know more, you can see more about our version of Traffolyte labels here.