Free dog tag SVG files

What to make with them

Military dog tags are worn in pairs on a ball chain, and that pair is what most people picture. As a decal it goes on shirts, tumblers and car windows for Veterans Day and Memorial Day, on gifts for someone joining up or coming home, and on memorial pieces. For a shirt, cut the pair about 150 mm tall in heat transfer vinyl and add the name in a plain capital typeface, which is how a real tag is stamped. The bone, the round tag and the heart are for pets: cut them from 3 mm acrylic on a laser, or use them as decals on a food bowl or a lead hook.

Cutting and engraving notes

A real military tag is about 50 by 28 mm, so the single tag at 100 mm is twice life size. The rolled rim is drawn as a slit about 2 mm wide at that size, with four gaps that hold the middle in place: do not weed the gaps out. The ball chain is a line about 2 mm wide with beads on it, which is fine in vinyl at 100 mm and fragile below 70 mm. If you engrave blank metal tags, cut the outline design from card at life size first and use it as a jig to place each tag in the same spot.

How to open the files

• Cricut Design Space: choose Upload, pick the SVG, and add it to the canvas. Set the width you want; the shape is already welded.
• Silhouette Studio: Designer Edition and above open the SVG. The free Basic Edition does not, so open the DXF instead.
• LightBurn, xTool Creative Space and Glowforge: import the SVG, then set the layer to cut, score or engrave.
• Inkscape, Illustrator and Affinity: open the SVG. It is a plain filled path, so you can recolour it, add a stroke or combine it with your own work.
• Printing or sublimation: use the PNG, which has a transparent background.

Each design page lists the file’s narrowest part at seven sizes, so you can tell whether it will survive at the size you plan to cut.

Questions