Burned foil paper! how do I clean up the mess!?

[veritasleather]

Hello,

Just got a heat embosser and have been experimenting with different types of leathers and heat temps. I went a bit to hot and the heat plate just absorbed the aluminum foil paper and now I have all the residue left on the inner plate. Any idea how to remove this without sanding or using much abrasives? 

thanks for the help!

Frank

[mike02130]

I'd try taking a torch to it.  Show it who's the boss.

[veritasleather]

6 minutes ago, mike02130 said:

I'd try taking a torch to it.  Show it who's the boss.

Thats actually not a bad idea, I removed the plate, I can take my mini torch to it. see what happens, im sure i won't damage it, its meant to handle up to 300 C. 

[mike02130]

Let us know if it worked.  

[fredk]

As long as the plate is not made of aluminium or magnesium alloy, try a soaking in a strong caustic soda solution.  CS dissolves aluminium quickly 

[RockyAussie]

I am wondering if you had the foil the wrong way up in order to do that? The gold or silver side should be the side that the plate makes contact with and the reverse side is more the adhesion side which should be against the leather.

[veritasleather]

14 hours ago, mike02130 said:

Let us know if it worked.  

Well it was worth a shot, tried to torch it and it didn't do much unfortunately .

[veritasleather]

8 hours ago, fredk said:

As long as the plate is not made of aluminium or magnesium alloy, try a soaking in a strong caustic soda solution.  CS dissolves aluminium quickly 

Yeah i am not sure if it is, the plate has a bit of weight to it so hopefully its not aluminum but not sure about magnesium. I have the Amazon (China) WT-90CT model. I will send a message to the seller and ask. They seem to be pretty good at responding.

[veritasleather]

6 hours ago, RockyAussie said:

I am wondering if you had the foil the wrong way up in order to do that? The gold or silver side should be the side that the plate makes contact with and the reverse side is more the adhesion side which should be against the leather.

I actually had it facing the right way, my mistake was that I had it way to hot, I had it set at 300c for paper according to the manual. The machines hot plate height from the bed comes set only about 1" clearance. I should have set that higher to give me more of a clearance to set the foil without touching the hot plate. But it was so hot that the hot plate sucked up the aluminum foil.

[Nikos69]

300 C? Damn, I do most of my hot foil projects around 100 C.

I use brass stamps and and accidentally had the foil flipped once. I put 1000 grit sandpaper on my marble slab and removed all sediments by rubbing the stamp in a circular motion.

 

 

 

Edited May 13, 2021 by Nikos69