MakerGear Forum

I came across this and thought it might be of general interest: http://www.modpurist.ca/2016/01/i-was-r ... -with.html

Print your desired image, logo, whatever, reversed on a laser printer. Tape it down and lightly wet with acetone under pressure; let dry; repeat.

I know lots of us probably have high purity acetone on hand, and maybe laser printers, too. Don't attempt with ABS prints, obviously.

I'll report back if/when I try it.

I've done it with wood and paper - never thought to try it with plastic.

Well, that was a bust. Tried several cycles, enough to where I reached the high end of "is this worth doing if it works." Managed to get a faint and spotty transfer onto a PLA surface. I think perhaps it could be made to work, but not without far more effort.

Maybe if you roughed up the surface a little - it always worked better on porous materials than smooth ones.

lol, i gotta try this!

For knife engraving, if I remember, you can use a mix of lighter fluid and varnish to make a semi sticky base for the laser toner to adhere to. It was a while back when I did it. You'd have to look it up to get more details. It is a technique get layout lines onto metal for engraving.

In the RC glider world we would print directly onto tissue wrapping paper that gets cut to make a decal. When finished over, the tissue generally disappears.

I've done this before and acetone was not required. I printed onto parchment paper in a laserjet, the toner just barely sticks to it. Then you can rub it onto your part like a dry-transfer (letraset anyone?) Works well, I used this to do the Atari logos on my custom SIO2SD enclosure.

cheers,
c