much of the difficulty of printing on a radio is that inks which are used for ink jet and laser printers is that the inks aren’t permanent.
silk screening.
with silk screening, and also partiially true for letterpress printing, you can use inks which are more permanent than you could with other printing methods.
pad printing
For a time my uncle ran some special equipment in a home based business This process he is is called "pad printing". Pad printing uses a rubber die with the type form that can slap against say- an ashtray or a golf ball and print on it that way.
you can use tough ink , try to scratch the writing off the bottom of an ashtray!
Flexo printing – flexographic printing uses raised rubber plates. this is how plastic bags get printed as well as a lot of plastic packaging. the raised rubber plates intended for flexo printing could be used for letterpress printing with permanent inks.
– a rubber stamp.
a simple form of letterpress printing is a rubber stamp. rubber stamps are made from materials similar to flexo printing
if you had a rubber stamp with the RCA logo could you just apply a permanet silver ink (or paint) directly to the radio? the rubber stamp places can put signatures onto a rubber stamp, so why not an RCA logo ?
I have a small silk screening frame. there is a bowl with a fine mesh for screening the ink , a 1′ x1′ or so frame , squeegee, a few colors of ink. It has never been used.
the first step in the proces is to make the mask which is done by photographic process as I know it, and I think some more modern materials have been invented to transfer the image mask from a computer to silk screen . the mask is transferred to the screen and stops the ink from passing wherever it isn’t wanted.
How about a really tiny silk screen and then a tiny squeegy to make the one off application of gold letters directly to the radio ?
Maybe silk screen ink would have the properties of both looking "gold" and also being permanent enough to not need to be underneath the laquer. I think it would be worth trying, just practice on something else and wipe it off right away if you don’t like it. what kind of ink would play nicely with the laquer? not enamal that’s for sure, it would bubble the laquer. epoxy maybe?
Phil