Animal Welfare Professionals

Our team is looking to purchase a portable engraver. Our community initiatives team will often set up at events. Looking to purchase 2, for about $5k, but open to adjusting for the right one.

Have you tried either of these companies? Can you make a recommendation if you've tried something else. 

#AdoptionsandAdoptionPrograms
#CommunityPartnerships*
#FieldServicesandPublicSafety*
#PetSupportServices*
#ReturntoHome(LostPetReunification)

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Shonyae Johnson - CPDT-KA
Learning + Development Sr. Manager
Operation Kindness Humane Society | Texas Unites
www.operationkindness.org
texasunites@operationkindness.org
Carrollton, TX,
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We have an iMarc and bought a Pelican case for it. We bring it to all of our events. It takes about 1 minute per tag to engrave. Unfortunately, the company doesn't offer any discounts for nonprofits - they are accustomed to dealing with for profit businesses.  The machine is programed so that we can put our logo on the tags which comes handy.

One tip about engraving at events - it's a very popular service and the wait time can get very long which would lead to us having unclaimed tags at the end of the day and they're not cheap so that really sucks! If you are offering other services, have your clients put their request in for a tag first and pick them up when they are done. 

I created a google form (in english and spanish) and I have them scan a QR code as soon as they arrive. My engraver has a laptop and the requests some on a spreadsheet when someone fills out the form. Not only does this expedite the process, but it cuts down on not being able to read people's penmanship! 

Feel free to reach out if you have any more questions meg@hapi.pet

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Meg McAdam
President
Human and Pet Initiative
CA
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We have an iMarc which is incredibly easy to use. We have it at our shelter for people to utilize. 

However, I will say, at our events we sell PetHub Tags, sure you can't engrave them at the location but ours have our shelter name on them. Then on the back of the tags is a QR code that the owners can use to create a free profile and put all sorts of useful information. I admit we buy the cheap stamped metal options, but it's about .50 per tag. If you buy a fancier tag it's about 2$. If people want to upgrade their tag, then can purchase straight from Pethub and just load their profile on it. This has been very popular with our community.

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Rachel Ide
Animal Services Director
Young-Williams Animal Center
TN
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I'm very interested in getting one of these for our shelter as well. If anyone has any leads on a retailer that would be able to add our logo to the back of the tag blanks, please let me know!

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Alex Ocampo
Client & Adoption Specialist Manager
Butler County Humane Society
Renfrew PA
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We purchased ours through https://www.visionengravers.com/ and they will engrave the logo for you. I opted to have them load the software on my machine so I can engrave logos myself. 

The iMarc machine is a dinosaur - these are not cutting edge technology machines or software, but it gets the job one. It almost feels like one of those portable compaq 386 machines from the 90's (said the old time software engineer). 

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Meg McAdam
President
Human and Pet Initiative
CA
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Original Message:
Sent: 03-05-2026 09:54 AM
From: Alex Ocampo
Subject: Pet Tag Engravers: Goscribe, iMarc, etc - HELP!

I'm very interested in getting one of these for our shelter as well. If anyone has any leads on a retailer that would be able to add our logo to the back of the tag blanks, please let me know!

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Alex Ocampo
Client & Adoption Specialist Manager
Butler County Humane Society
Renfrew PA
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Our organization purchased a GoScribe engraver 3 years ago and it has been a great little machine! It's small and easily portable and takes less than a minute to engrave. I would agree with the other poster on the wait time. We used to take ours to our monthly pet Resource center but with the amount of pets people have it was taking several minutes and people were leaving without their tags. We actually have a jotform "application" on our website where people can submit a request for an ID tag and we mail it to them free of charge. 

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Lauren Hughes
Co-founder
SNIP NSAVE INC
KY
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We have iMarc, but ours broke almost right away.  You get free repairs in the first year, I think it was, but you have to pay for shipping and the machine is a beast.  They will try to talk you through repairs on the phone, but ours is still broken, and I cannot bear to lose more money, sending it off.  I keep hoping that I can find someone tech savvy locally that can fix it.  I do regret the purchase.

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Laura McKelvey
Shelter Manager
PAWS Atlanta
GA
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