@eflyguy, my concern with vinyl transfer tape is over what happens when the laser turns the plastic into a chemistry experiment with potentially toxic consequences. I suspect there are some plastic transfer tapes out there, designed to be lasering-safe, but don’t have any specifics yet.
Great tutorial–I’ll definitely be trying this! Thank you!
BTW, you could prevent a lot of the smeariness by gently blowdrying the paint after you’ve removed the paper for each layer. Get a blowdryer with a cool-air button, and press that as you go so you don’t damage anything with the additional heat. I use mine all the time for drying ink, paint, etc.
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https://www.johnsonplastics.com has several, and I’m sure they aren’t the most affordable out there…
Has me thinking, though - one of us might contact the manufacturers of the most common brands, and ask for a materials breakdown…
@morganstanfield, already on it with the blowdrying - I hadn’t included this picture in the original post, but yeah, there was some hot air involved. I could have simply let it air dry, but I was too worried of a software crash resetting the job, so I wanted to finish asap.
The acrylic paint I used, would shrink in volume substantially (like 90%). That shrinkage was fortunate, as it would keep the transfer tape from messing with the paint layers already down. So I would dry the paint enough to shrink down into the well, typically about 5 minutes.
Next time I’ll create (using the GF of course) a jig that will allow me to remove the panel off the bed and out of the GF so I can have more time and flexibility in processing between engravings.
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