Image Transfer Using Laser Printer And Acetone

[leatheroo]

I recently got myself some rotary engraving stuff and wanted to transfer a pattern to metal and after doing some googling came upon the laser printer and acetone method. The image to be used is printed..(.remember to reverse the image) on a laser printer and then placed face down on the metal. Wet a cloth with some acetone and wipe the back of the image. Then burnish the back of the picture and the picture is transfered to the metal. So i now had to try this with leather. Same process, being careful not to get acetone on the leather and here are the results. The draw back is that the image does not come off. Well i havent found anything to get it off yet. I would probably use this method if i was going to dye the finished carved project black.

Also a pic of my first metal engraving and an engraved bird flourish, both done using the above method of image transfer

Cheers

caroline

Edited March 26, 2011 by leatheroo

[Ladykahu]

Out of curiosity

Did you just use 'normal' printer settings or did you go for one of the more 'saturated' settings?

I know when I have printed directly onto fabric I always have to play a bit to get the right amount of ink saturation, so presumably if you over saturated the paper, more would come off on the leather? and, I wonder if other paper types would be better or worse? thinking glossy, or super matt, or even overhead projector film?

Natalie

[leatheroo]

Hi Nat, i just used normal settings, with cheapo supermarket paper....note i did this with a laser and not an inkjet. I originally was looking for a laser that had the fuser busted...its the fuser that sets the ink on the paper. I found this was not so easy to find, also if the fuser is not working, the printer usually wont work either...it gives error messages. With leather transfer i didnt want the image to be permanent, i wanted it for carving, to eliminate the whole tracing over the picture , then carving process.

cheers

Edited March 26, 2011 by leatheroo

[cem]

Thankyou for the tip Roo, I finally was able to give this a go after being able to do not much else due to a recent operation. I've also found that you can use a colour laser printer I did line work in yellow, blue and some darker toned browns to match the leather and they all worked fine. I use Illustrator and did a stroke of 1pt this is big enough to see properly and also to lose it in the swivel knife cut. My husband left our camera at work so I wasn't able to get any pics today but if your interested in seeing the colour transfer I can take some pics once he brings the camera home.

Cheers,

Clair

[alb]

I'd like to see it!

Thanks,

Ann

[leatheroo]

love to see the pics clair....good idea to reduce the stroke to 1pt

[cem]

My husband forgot the camera again so I had to use my scanner, also had a bit of trouble with my laser printer as I'm nearly out of toner for a couple of colours I'd being try to push it for as long as I can but I think it's now time to replace them. So the samples aren't as dark as what I got yesterday, anyway here they are I expect someone with a bit more time and a fully functioning laser printer would get better results.

Cheers,

Clair

Edited May 9, 2011 by cem

[alb]

Thanks for posting the pictures. It's certainly functional for the purpose of providing a line to cut from.

Ann

[Ladykahu]

I tried with using a tallygenicom laser printer at work (just happened to be one closest to my office) and no matter what I did I couldn't get it to burnish off onto the leather.

So I did some more reading online and found a few comments about how some folks had differing sucess depending on the printer breed used.. so I kept reading trying to find which of the many breeds of printers (lexmark, HP, brother etc) we have at work was likely to work best, and came across this forum post

http://www.engraving...read.php?t=1661

Its a discussion about using baking paper instead of paper to do the transfer.

I tried it and it worked SO well!!!!

I tried using acetone on the leather, and then metholated spirits to help lift the ink off the baking paper - both of them smudged off the leather to easily for what I wanted. The forum discussion was for transfering onto wood and they where using a type of varnish dried until tacky to do the transfer.

I tried using some Jo Sonja's 'Clear Glaze Medium' (which I have on hand, and have used to seal some acrylic paint underneath neat lac just fine) as my 'varnish' on my leather and the print came off easily and with incredibly fine detail

Sorry about the photo quality.. taken using my phone camera, and I couldn't get rid of the glare. I was using some pig skin lining scraps.

This is a picture of my test bit using the glaze to transfer the image

This is a close up

This was the test with using acetone to transfer the image

and this was using metholated spirits, and then I coated the image with the glaze, its a little smudged.

Natalie

[Wishful]

Some great possibilities!

[leatheroo]

excellent pics clair and natalie!

[Ladykahu]

I tried last night with using neat lac instead of the glaze medium

and it worked just fine! didn't scratch off

Just in case anyone else wants to play

Natalie