Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: NevilleWright on June 19, 2013, 07:01:58 pm
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Been trying to get information out of Metallurgy4 in the UK for 4 days without success. Their Australian agents are not answering emails either. I use an Epson 4800 and would love to print on metal (proper metal, not paper) but information for self printing on metal is hard to source in Australia. I do not wish to pay the price for someone else to print as that sucks the profit out of the selling price.
Nev
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Unless they changed the formula it is not metal it is plastic with a silvery chrome surface.
I purchased a roll of this several years ago for some testing.
The prints came out just awful. My final test was to light a match to an edge and boy did that plastic burn.
Somewhere buried in the archives here at LuLa is a thread I started along with the picture of the product burning.
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That's pretty interesting Dan. Maybe it looks like I'll have to go the InkAid route which is available here.
Sliprock Gloss 17” wide in roll paper is available here. Anyone used that with success?
Nev
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Inkaid on metal works fine if you can keep the dust out of the Inkaid until dry.
I have used Inkaid on aluminum,copper and stainless steel. Copper is my favorite.
You have to be very careful about spraying your protective coating on before your inks are dry.
The blacks take forever to dry. Of the 3 or 4 that we sprayed after 12 hours all of them produced a nice wrinkled crackle finish after a week or so.
I let one print that had quite a lot of black dry for a week and it still crackled.
They can be coated they just need to be dry,dry.
I used Clearstar Clearjet FA 2000 a solvent finish.
You may want to try some other topcoats and see if the results are different.
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Thanks again Dan. I have used Golden water based urethane on inkjet prints without any problems of cracking. But like you say it has to be dry. There are some spray on water based urethane available for spray guns. Used plenty of solvent based coatings in the past but have been trying to get away from that. We used to have a spray booth just for that.
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Could you please mention more specifically which Golden water-based urethane product you are using?
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Sorry! Big typo. Should have said polymer. The urethane product is aquathane. http://gicleemedia.com.au/gms43/Aquathane-UV-A-UV-Blocking-Laminate
It is also possible to precoat oil free metal using Goldens Digital Grounds http://www.goldenpaints.com/mixmoremedia/prepsubs.php . I have some of that it stock so will get some sheet metal this weekend and try it out.
Also http://www.goldenpaints.com/technicaldata/digigrnd.php
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Neville, how does Digital Grounds differ from InkAid? I've used both InkAid and DASS and both seem to be the same product to me.
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No idea Bob. You would need to talk to the manufacturers. It is just that I have digital grounds on hand and would need to purchase inkaid to try. The supplier of Golden for me is just an hours drive away.
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Booksmart makes an aqueous printable metal. This eliminates the use of inkaid. The only issue is stock. Sometimes it takes a while to get a certain size back in stock.
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Booksmart makes an aqueous printable metal. This eliminates the use of inkaid. The only issue is stock. Sometimes it takes a while to get a certain size back in stock.
The only issue is stock? Price doesn't come into play at all? Not even when you consider that some Booksmart metals can verge on $80/sheet, if I recall?
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This morning at Bunnings (= Lowes Hardware or Masters) I was able to purchase 2 sheets 300 x 900 polished aluminium .8mm thick for $15 a sheet. Now I have to coat and test. My wife suggested I should go to a sheet metal fabricator and get them to cut to size. Last year I did that for a non photographic project and the stainless steel sheet came with peel off plastic coating on the glossy side. I'll let everyone know how it all finishes up. BTW, today we also saw low (really low) cost, gloss white or black painted box frames around 900 x 600 x 25mm deep for around $19 each at the 'cheap' shop. Lots of other sizes as well. Each came with a stretched canvas in side as part of the package.