Two of the drawers didn’t ship, for some reason, so that’s a bit of a bummer, but otherwise, I’m pretty happy how it turned out. ROCK solid top surface. I took the bracers off the bottom shelf so I could drop it a few inches lower (they’re for additional surface stability, no effect on weight, etc). There are power outlets built in along the back surface, and cable routing down the uprights.
Only mistake I made, I forgot to count the additional height of the casters in to my design, so instead of having the top surface nearly level with the uprights, I have some side guards.
I think it’d probably work great for “attached” graphics, but for something with lots of dots and standalone detail, getting a graphic engraved then onto transfer paper without messing up the design seems like it’d be challenging, all while fighting the ventilation system.
I guess if you put it adhesive side down on something like a Seklema mat to hold down the design, engrave away the material you’d otherwise have to weed, then pick up from the Seklema with heat transfer paper…You’d have to really play around with different adhesives on the transfer paper though. And if you engrave away the material while attached to an adhesive mat, I’d think transferring the design without picking up ash would be complicated.
If you read the Laserflex materials they indicate the whole point of the product is the stuff you said it can’t do. There is no step where you transfer the design to application material. The transfer material comes stuck to the application material, like regular HTV. Unlike regular HTV, you vaporize the parts you don’t want, instead of weeding them away.
The example photos are things I would never even try with regular HTV. I am looking forward to trying it out.
The example they show on the green is a good example of a design with lots of free bits, but it wasn’t clear in the description whether it included the transfer sheet…I found a video here: https://www.trotec-materials.com/news/video-laserflex-tutorial-heat-transfer, around 3.5 min in, looks like they vector cut most of the design, engrave out what you’d otherwise have to weed (middles of letters, etc), and tune the engrave strength to vaporize just the design layer while leaving the backing layer. That’s going to take some trial and error to dial in the settings, but I’d probably still mess up less material than when I get impatient while weeding and inadvertently tear up half my design.
I’m surprised, it doesn’t look like the engraved bits leave a mark on the fabric. May have to get some sample materials after all…
