The Photometal division of Bowtye Holdings Ltd.  began  in 1996 and is always looking for a challenge!

We provide anodized aluminum overlays and nameplates. For labeling that is incredibly durable – temperature, heat, & chemical resistant for 20+ years.

How do you make Photometal ?

The product we use to process Photometal is a photosensitive aluminum.  To produce it, there are a couple of steps!

First we receive the order, could be a tag order for a drilling rig, labeling for light standards on the Anthony Henday, electrical panels or a drillers rig console being built in Nisku.

Then the first step to actually making the product is to set up the design in a drafting program.  Once we have a layout established, we then send off the proofs to our customer for approval, usually by email.

For driller consoles, we typically receive AutoCAD or PDF files with the order, with exact measurements for the cutouts – the holes or cutout  positions need to match an existing plate. We have manufactured drilling consoles for rigs in Canada, United States, Algeria, South America  & Australia to name a few.
For rig console proofs we use a Canon plotter to print up the entire console at 100% on paper.

Once we have the approval to proceed, we need to make a negative.

We have 2 imagsetters that produce negatives. Our workhorse is the Afga 1000, which outputs a higher resolutions, excellent for logos. We also have a brand new desktop imagesetter.

Next step – to process the image into the aluminum, for that we need work in a darkroom .  We place the negative onto the photosensitive aluminum, then into a vacuum plate and turn on very bright lights! The aluminum is porous, so when the light hits the clear parts of the negative it produces a black image into the aluminum.

Next, same as film, we put the plate into a developer solution to develop the image and then into a fixer solution to stop the image from overdeveloping.

The plate is rinsed, dried checked for inconsistencies – if there is any background colors, we need to dye the natural silver background and then put the plates into a boiling sealing bath, for 10 minutes,  this step  closes the pores and seals  the image deep into the aluminium.

The last step is cutting up the individual tags or for a driller’s rig console, punching the holes for the devices. 

The image, embedded into the aluminum, produces a high quality product guaranteed to last for 20+ years!

We supply to numerous oil field, commercial and electrical companies with  nameplates, breaker panels, drilling consoles, light standard pole identification tags, trailer identification tags,  septic tank labeling, pump id tags and machine shop assets nameplates.  The medical field would greatly benefit from a nameplate that can be easily sterilized – wherever a nameplate needs to be, we can manufacture it and if you want durability – you want Photometal.

Donna Huebner
Bowtye Holdings Ltd,
Photometal Division