I made a 12" wood sign for a friend’s dog lead business. I don’t normally make signs, so I was pleased how this turned out.
The sign back and the girl are MDF, and the multi-colored bits are sublimated. (The process was; painted orange>masked>scored>weeded>spray paint one color using Ironlak paint>and repeat.) The sign was then given three coats of Krylon “triple thick” coating which really gave the sublimation nice depth and shine. I had screwed up painting the black lines on the girl because the paint bled, so a made another one and settled on leaving it the natural engraved color instead of having a nice, deep black. So I was happily surprised how rich the engraving came out with the clear coating, and you can’t tell it wasn’t painted.
Being able to sublimate the detailed parts was such a huge time saver versus having to paint them!
Sublimation details: Sublimated on 1/16" white cast acrylic. (No sprays/laminate needed.)
Three presses at 385 degrees for 20 seconds each with about a 10-15 second pause in between. (60 seconds total pressing time.)
I’m curious about your sub technique. Why did you press 3 times? The goal is to heat the ink so it turns to gas so I don’t understand why doing it 3 times serves you better than once. Does it release more ink? Make the acrylic less melty?
Yes, it prevents the acrylic from overheating and flattening and/or warping more. Just a few seconds pause between the presses with light pressure seems to do the trick and then I slide it out (still in the blowout paper) and put it between two cool tiles. It especially helped on the really thin stuff and I still got really good color.
You do such great work and this just adds to the pizzazz! I’m so curious about sublimation, too…and this makes me wonder even more about it now. VERY nice!
