Paint filling acrylic

[Joe Pelonio]

Upon my return from a vacation in Maui, not only is it well below freezing here, but I have an order for 75 acrylic templates. These are 1/8" clear acrylic, engraved (text raster, lines vector) in reverse on the back, then paint filled using acrylic paint squeegied on then wiped off with a microfiber towel. They are wholesale for a manufacturer, and a patented/proprietary item so I only took a picture of a part of it showing the blue. Messy, but easy and fairly quick process.300377300378

[Michele Welch]

Very cool Joe! My quilter's eye thinks that's a quilting template :) If I could only find time to do both my passions of quilting and using the laser!!! Great job!

[Joe Pelonio]

Very cool Joe! My quilter's eye thinks that's a quilting template :) If I could only find time to do both my passions of quilting and using the laser!!! Great job!

Good guess, but no, it's for a machine that's not quilt related. I have done many, many quilt templates, however. My wife quilts and teaches at a fabric store.

[Michele Welch]

Wow, lucky woman!! I don't sew except for household curtains, etc, but I love to quilt, just don't have the time to do it much.

[Jiten Patel]

Hi Joe,

fancy posting a video of the whole process. I can't for the life of me get this right. Have tried and failed so many times, simply gave up on it. Would really love to know how its done properly.

[Michael Hunter]

Same here.

I either get paint all over everything, or it ends up perfectly clean - with no paint left in the engraving.
There must be a middle way!

[Joe Pelonio]

I may be working on them again tonight, and try to get some video.

[Jiten Patel]

Michael, they same thing happens to me...a complete mess or all of it wipes away. Really annoying as we have so many ideas that would be great for filling.

Joe, if you can, you are a super star!

[Mayo Pardo]

I've recently tried painting some engraved foam. The kind of foam that's sold in hobby stores in 12x18 inch sheets.
From the start I knew this would be difficult to paint due to the micro-porous nature of the foam.

My first test was with a bare piece of engraved foam and as suspected, paint did not simply wipe off the non engraved areas. It stained the areas surrounding the engraving.

The next step was attempting to adhere paper masking material - the kind used with vinyl lettering.
This had two problems. It make the foam curl and cup towards the paper mask, and it was difficult getting it to stick. I didn't even attempt to engrave since it wouldn't stay flat.

I remembered seeing some videos online demonstrating a liquid masking. It looked like silk screen block out liquid, and thinking back to my screen printing days, we occasionally would use plain old Elmer's white glue or school glue to block out screens we were going to print using solvent based inks.

Keep in mind, this is probably only suitable for water resistant materials.

I coated the foam with Elmer's glue and let it dry completely. I engraved, and first painted (white semi-gloss bathroom acrylic latex) it with a small brush. After the paint was totally dry, I took the foam to the sink and let it soak face down in warm water for about a minute. Then I was able to rub off the excess paint and glue. This worked pretty good although there were parts of the design where some of the white paint was washed out of the engraving. This may not have happened if I used acrylic craft paint - I'll try that after the next test.

The current test is with the same method and same paint except I applied the paint using a stiff plastic card instead of the brush. This made the paint application much faster. I'll be washing off the excess in another couple hours and if results are good that will be the system I use.

[David Somers]

Mayo,

This may have no bearing on what you are actually trying to accomplish, but would it be easier to do what amounts to intarsia with the craft foam? Use the laser to cut the forms or letters you want out of the background piece of foam. Then cut what will be inlaid into that out of the other pieces of foam and piece them together? You may need to glue them onto a background layer of some sort. More foam? Perhaps a thinner foam or some other material? But then you aren't struggling with trying to paint onto a porous and highly bendable substrate?

Dave

[Joe Pelonio]

I went ahead and did a short video, and uploaded it to Flickr. The link is below. Let me know if you have any questions or it doesn't show up. I'll be working on them most of the evening, with about 35 done out of 75 for this order.

Warning, you may get dizzy. It's hard to old the phone steady while working with the other hand.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bisjoe/15645921590/

[Jiten Patel]

Thank Joe, that was great...you made it look so easy. The part I cannot get right, it taking the paint off. It just takes it out the engraved areas too. How deep do you go?

[Joe Pelonio]

Thank Joe, that was great...you made it look so easy. The part I cannot get right, it taking the paint off. It just takes it out the engraved areas too. How deep do you go?
I have no way to measure the depth, but I engrave at a slower than normal speed (80) with higher power (65), to go deeper, and for the lines, speed 35, power 25. The lines appear to be less than 1/4 of the way deep. It helps that the paint is thick but smooth, so it goes in easily but remains in. An only costs 69 cents/bottle at the craft store. Are you using cast acrylic? The paint doesn't stick as well to extruded. When the customer asked for paint fill I had to switch to cast, and add that to the price as well as the painting time.

[Mayo Pardo]

David,

The inlaid or intarsia method wouldn't work for the designs I'm doing. Small text about 3/16 and images with smaller detail.

I tried another 7 pieces last night and filled the engraved areas with paint with a thin "rewards card" from a local store, and after the paint had dried a few hours I did the warm water soak for a minute, and instead of rubbing the excess paint off, I used the card to scrape it off and this worked better - more even and consistent than my fingers for removing the paint. There was less paint removed from areas where it should have remained.

If I engrave just a little deeper, I think the Elmer's glue masking idea is a success.

[Scott Shepherd]

Thanks Joe for sharing that video. For those that are having difficulties, skip the liquid paint, go the paint department in the craft stores where they keep canvas, brushes, etc. and get yourself a tube of acrylic paint. It's the consistency of toothpaste, you can squirt a bit out, use business cards you collect from people you'll never do business with, drag it across the item to fill, come at it from 3-4 directions to get it all filled in. Use the business card to scrape off any excess. Let it dry for a few minutes, lightly dampen (the lighter the better) a paper towel with denatured alcohol and wipe the excess off.

The reason I like this paint much better than the liquid is because once you fill the engraving and let it dry, it shrinks down into the engraving a little bit. That means when you are wiping the excess away, it doesn't pull all your paint out of the engraving. If you need to retouch for a missed area, just repeat in that area.

I stopped using liquids maybe 2 years ago after discovering the acrylic paste like paints.

[Mike Null]

I normally use the liquid craft paint but in this example I sprayed the clear acrylic with red Krylon then reverse engraved the images. I then filled the yellow areas with liquid craft paint using a card, then sprayed the entire back with white Krylon. I then covered the back with white vinyl as it was used outdoors in a restaurants roof top garden.

I should add that the quality of the sign is far better than the quality of the picture.



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[Steve Morris]

What the Sheriff said ^^ the tube paint is sooo much easier to work with, keeps a dense colour too.

[Balsanu Gabi]

Hi Mike,

What kind of acrylic do you use (cast or extruded)?
The reason for asking this is I try it, but extruded craze like hell.
Also, Krylon was fusion or normal spray paint?
Thank you
Gabi

[Mike Null]

Gabi

I generally use extruded as I get clearer color through the engraving. I use Fusion whenever possible. The downside to that is that I have to buy it at Wal-mart as they're the only place I've found that keeps it in stock in good variety. Oh yeah, they're at least a dollar cheaper per can than the other guys.

[Balsanu Gabi]

Hi

Mike. Thank you. How deep do you go? The reason for asking this is I have a chinesse machine which do not "know" the thickness of lines. In order to achieve what Joe does I need to raster engrave all. Hence the question.
The other issue is when you have large fonts or areas to be covered with paint.

Gabi

[Mike Null]

Gabi

I would say about .030", sometimes deeper. On wood always deeper. On larger areas I much prefer spraying the finish and using a mask as clean up can be frustrating.

I rarely do a fill on clear acrylics as in Joe's example as most of my work is on signs where I'm engraving a painted finish then filling the engraved portion.