Mentioned in this thread I was looking at security marking. Arbor press (pre-purchase proposal) - The Hackspace - Forum | Hackspace Manchester (hacman.org.uk)
Making this to thread to discuss specifics.
Decent overview article of methods after brief googling: How to Mark Your Tools to Prevent Theft (gocodes.com)
There may not be a one-size-fits all solution. Stencils/paint etc may also be worthwhile. Perhaps laser team could make plastic stencils from suitably resistant plastics that could be used for etching/spraying (not sure if laser-safe plastics are acid resistant, someone else will need to chime in there).
Clarification after some DMs:
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Interest in doing this was mainly sparked because I just bought a pile of IRWIN quickgrip clamps for the space. Every man and his dog owns IRWIN quickgrips and members bring their own tools so I don’t want them to get mixed up. Furthermore I lost my ear defenders and I think they might be in the space but I’m not sure the ones I think might be mine aren’t the space’s ear defenders.
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This wouldn’t be linked to an asset database. While it may be worth putting asset tags on things, having simple methods available for just marking something as a hackspace thing somewhat permanently reduces barriers to doing this and means there’s not attached admin.
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I’d suggest a pretty generic hacman stamp with the website URL that could also be used for branding hacman creations if that’s ever something we wanted to do.