I picked up some laser foil and have been having fun…
But I’ve noticed when I etch it away, I’m left with the adhesive film on the substrate. Has anyone found a way to avoid that? I’ve done some where I cut it away and peel the excess off, but that has it’s own issues, retracted corners, etc.
Beautiful work and creativity!
For foil, look into gilding. There are many gilding glues, first paint the glue on, let it dry, and then place the sheets of foil over it.
There are aluminum foils in gold, silver, copper, multi metallic, and there are pure gold, copper and silver foils.
I get foil in bulk on aliexpress very inexpensive, they also have very good strong gilding glue. But you can easily get a small amount on amazon prime inexpensively to try.
I’ve used the gold foil a few times now and have never run into the issue that you describe, though most of my experiments have been using it on LaserTiles, not on wood. I love the art deco design you used and it lends itself well to using the gold foil.
Yes, if you cut or engrave on the foil applied to wood, you will get that gumminess. I have tried masking the foil before cutting and that helps a lot. The gumminess can be removed with alcohol but that might affect the adhesive of the foil.
Nice design!
Perhaps rather than engraving away the foil, maybe use a score to cut through, and then weed away the unwanted foil?
Like @Xabbess, I’ve used Laser Foil a couple of times and I haven’t experienced what you are. Unlike @Xabbess, I’ve only used it on wood. The excess seems to come off completely cleanly. Maybe there’s some difference in the type of wood?
This was my first try at using laser foil…and it’s on a laser tile, as well. Both methods are demonstrated here…
The top one used a filled background shape and the laser engraved the background away from the lettering.
The second one is having the lettering filled and a score around the UNfilled background shape.
I much prefer the first method, but it was an interesting experiment to see how it worked.
Can I ask what settings you used? I used 1000/15% for two passes – hoping to etch away the foil and then the adhesive without cutting into the wood.
what settings did you use on this foil project, can you share?
On the tile I used 1000/100/ LPI 340 for engraving
500/50 for scoring
*note; this is a LaserTile, not just a regular tile
On PG Cherry, I added a paper mask over the foil;
engrave 1000 / FP / LPI 270
score; 400 / 25
So uhh… REALLY sorry for not seeing this question for a whole year!
Interestingly enough, I haven’t tried engraving the foil away. I’ve only scored it. I simply use the appropriate score setting for the material I’m working with. That’s worked fine so far for me. To me, that’s the way it’s supposed to be used… you cut it, and remove the excess. But, really, it just never ocurred to me to try engraving. Might work just fine! 