Lasering Matte Board with Diploma Script Font

[Terry Swift]

Guys,

Another new project from a customer. They have some 16" x 20" picture frames with black felt matte board that is .005" thick. The places for the picture and tassle are already cut out and they would like to have the Universities name cut out or embossed some how with gold (color). As I don't have embossing equipment, I thought about cutting the letters out with the laser and backing it up with some Rowmark Gold MetalGraph acrylic. Since the Diploma font has a ton of iddy biddy lines and pieces - I have to glue the matte board to the acrylic. I thought about using some rubber cement as it's bondable; but not so much that I couldn't pull the parts of the letters off that need to - to show the gold color of the acrylic. This may be a bit of overkill; but I tried to raster the felt off down to the paper (white backing) and then use some gold foil; but again with this font - sticking was an issue. I know Dan has mentioned in the past of using glue on to substrate, then attaching the foil to make it bond better. I'll try that a bit later as the customer needed it yesterday of course and I'm figuring out the best (easiest and lest costly for me) approach in the future should I become a good customer (they run a frame shop).

I did do a quick preview of previous posts but nothing looked like what I'm trying to accomplish. If I missed it, please forgive my haste.

Thanks

[Mike Null]

Terry

The only way I would use foil is behind the matte after you've vectored the outlines of the letters in the matte. I assume you're referring to the shading that is standard on the Old English variety of font usually used on diplomas. That can be handled by engraving the shaded area only on the foil that you put behind the matte. The shaded area can be done in gray or you can use a diagonal fill from the post script fill tool.

Obviously, very careful registration is necessary but possible.

[Terry Swift]

Terry

The only way I would use foil is behind the matte after you've vectored the outlines of the letters in the matte. I assume you're referring to the shading that is standard on the Old English variety of font usually used on diplomas. That can be handled by engraving the shaded area only on the foil that you put behind the matte. The shaded area can be done in gray or you can use a diagonal fill from the post script fill tool.

Obviously, very careful registration is necessary but possible.

Sorry Mike, but I'm not clearly understanding your comments. The "diploma" font has a lot of detail and if I vector the letters in say "DeVry University", then parts in the insides of the font get dropped out as they are not truly connected with the overall font itself. I don't think using the foil behind the matte board would be much different than using the acrylic - although probably cheaper. What I did was glue the acrylic to the matte board (a 2" x 11" piece) with rubber cement for the acrylic an matte board bond together, but no so much that I couldn't pull the necessary pieces of the vectored matte board off - leaving some of the details of each letter if required still glued to the acrylic. Even then, to get the matte board off the acrylic, I had to laser into the acrylic for #1 a registration point if the pieces of the font fell off sometime after the lasering (transport, mounting, etc.) That was the truly fun part to get those marks into the very thin acrylic (1/32") I was using; without completely cutting thru the acrylic as well and losing those pieces too.

I am looking for suggestions on a simpler process, if there is one besides declining the job itself. :p I'm not sure how other frame shops do their embossing of lettering and graphics, as I haven't had a chance to scope the whole issue (embossing) out yet. This was just my quick thinking to get the job done with what I had on hand (no much there either - :D). Maybe I can talk the framers at places like Michaels, Hobby Lobby, & Aaron Frames how they do it!

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[Dan Hintz]

I'm not sure how thick the napp is on the velvet, but one possibility for a very short napp is to glue the velvet down to a solid base (acrylic, scrap plastic, whatever), cover the area to be lasered with tape, engrave through the tape, spray with gold paint, remove tape. If any of the gold gets underneath the tape, it will likely look ugly.

[Mike Null]

You do have a dilemma. How about scrapping the nappy matte altogether, use a reverse engraved black acrylic with gold color fill from the back side.

[Terry Swift]

Dan - the nap / felt is very thin and when I tried some different tests on a piece of scrap; the tape pulled quite a bit of the fuzz with it. I thought about painting the engraved part; but did not try it yet. I can still test it with the scrap I have to see if it works. I just hoped the gold foil would work for it's reflective qualities.

Mike - the 2 ply acrylic idea (black & gold) could possibly work, but the customer brought me the materials and my laser cannot accommodate large acrylic pieces (above 12" x 24" - laser table size). This matte just fit within the confines of my laser to where I could laser the lettering in that area. Outside of that particular area, it would be difficult for me to laser due to its size.

[Dan Hintz]

Did you use a low-tack tape? If that doesn't have enough grip, try medium-tack.

[Mike Null]

Terry

This stuff is obviously of such low quality that I'd be inclined to turn the job down. An SMC member recently asked me to engraved some large panels of wood with a lot of names. I advised him that the result would be disappointing and that he should consider another material. He did and pictures will be posted when he is finished with the project.

You just need to advise the customer of what works and what doesn't.

BTW, the diploma font you're working with does not have the shading I referred to earlier.

[Martin Boekers]

You may want to check this sight out.

www.pulsarprofx.com/decalpro/vertical/1_MENU/1b_Overview/Overview.html (http://www.pulsarprofx.com/decalpro/vertical/1_MENU/1b_Overview/Overview.html)

Interesting stuff. I used something similar for certificates years ago. I laser printed
to a heavy card stock then ran that through a laminator sandwiched with the gold foil sheeting.
The toner softened enough to adhered the gold to the toner area on the card stock.
worked for what I needed at the time.


We have a debosser tool with our Wizard mat cutter, it does some neat things.
Also, you could engrave to the glass and fill with Rub n Buff. Sometime we do cut another
hole in the mat for a text area, then it opens the door for many different ways to do the text area.

[George D Gabert]

One option might be to use laser foil on the top of the matte, cut letters, weed and then press into place.

A second option might be to mask the matte, engrave letters, apply size and then apply gold leaf.

Regards
GDG