help: how to add colour with laser engraving

[studiocroco]

hi,

i make personalised leathergoods and laser engrave a lot of things in leather.

Now i want to add colour in my laser engraving like gold or silver. So i can also engrave on darker leather.

Does anyone know how to do this?

I add a picture to show an example. I know for sure the example has been laser engraved because i saw a making of. But they did not show the total process.

I tried with angelus leatherpaint but that's not as slick as on the picture.

I hope someone can help me out, you would be a life saver!

ps: i asked the company of the picture how they do it but offcourse i didn't receive an answer

 

Regards,

Myrthe

[Northmount]

5 hours ago, studiocroco said:

Now i want to add colour in my laser engraving

Moved your post to 3D Printers and Lasers

[Ferg]

The simplest way I know of is to mask the leather completely, laser through it and spray the color you wish into the engrave, allow to dry to the touch then remove masking. It is important to allow the paint/ink to dry but not allowing the masking to remain for long time since some times there are small indentions in the leather that allow the spray to penetrate under the masking. Most of the time you can remove unwanted color from surface without damage to leather

A spray to seal the leather and the coloring used works best. If you apply a sealer with a cloth you will have the color migrating all over the place. I engrave leather by dampening the leather before engrave, results in better rendition.

Color on the engraved portions is tricky at best, practice on a piece of scrap.

[Dwight]

27 minutes ago, Ferg said:

The simplest way I know of is to mask the leather completely, laser through it and spray the color you wish into the engrave, allow to dry to the touch then remove masking. It is important to allow the paint/ink to dry but not allowing the masking to remain for long time since some times there are small indentions in the leather that allow the spray to penetrate under the masking. Most of the time you can remove unwanted color from surface without damage to leather

A spray to seal the leather and the coloring used works best. If you apply a sealer with a cloth you will have the color migrating all over the place. I engrave leather by dampening the leather before engrave, results in better rendition.

Color on the engraved portions is tricky at best, practice on a piece of scrap.

Thanks, Ferg

May God bless,

Dwight

[studiocroco]

On 11/29/2023 at 11:08 PM, Ferg said:

The simplest way I know of is to mask the leather completely, laser through it and spray the color you wish into the engrave, allow to dry to the touch then remove masking. It is important to allow the paint/ink to dry but not allowing the masking to remain for long time since some times there are small indentions in the leather that allow the spray to penetrate under the masking. Most of the time you can remove unwanted color from surface without damage to leather

A spray to seal the leather and the coloring used works best. If you apply a sealer with a cloth you will have the color migrating all over the place. I engrave leather by dampening the leather before engrave, results in better rendition.

Color on the engraved portions is tricky at best, practice on a piece of scrap.

Thank you for your answer. I'll try that!

[Littlef]

Another untested thought... seal the leather with a resist.  Then burn your image through the sealant, and wipe the color over the image and wipe off, similar to how you'd apply an antique.     maybe?  

[studiocroco]

1 hour ago, Littlef said:

Another untested thought... seal the leather with a resist.  Then burn your image through the sealant, and wipe the color over the image and wipe off, similar to how you'd apply an antique.     maybe?  

nice option as well.
With a resist, you mean something like a tape? Or a layer that i also can wipe off?

[Littlef]

4 hours ago, studiocroco said:

nice option as well.
With a resist, you mean something like a tape? Or a layer that i also can wipe off?

I was referring to a resist such as this image. Its used when antiquing leather.  It seals the leather so that antiquing gel only adheres to the areas that are tooled, and the antiquing gel will wipe back off of the portions of smooth leather.  It might work.... it might not.

[chuck123wapati]

They probably used a technique called heat embossing which is pretty simple to do so they probably didn't want to tell. I have no idea if it would work with a laser.

[Northmount]

5 hours ago, chuck123wapati said:

They probably used a technique called heat embossing which is pretty simple to do so they probably didn't want to tell. I have no idea if it would work with a laser.

@studiocroco It certainly looks like hot foil pressed image.  Once you have the equipment (a hot foil press) it is certainly faster and much easier to do than have to work through the various contortions listed above.

The hot foil presses often show up on local for sale FB and other sites.