Color filling acrylic

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Just wondering...

How many of you color fill acrylic? Is it worth the time? Does it come out looking nice? I haven't had much luck in the past. I heard Rowmark now has color paint. Has anyone tried this?

I've turned away a couple of jobs b/c seems like it would be a lot of work, esp if the customer has a strict budget.

I have a potential customer now that wants 150 pieces of acrylic color filled. The engraving would be in 2 languages (approx 3 to 5 lines of text). It sounds to me like he needs screenprinting. What are your thoughts?

[Joe Pelonio]

Tiny text is difficult to fill on acrylic, for larger I engrave through transfer tape and spray with Krylon fusion. If you have an idea of the text size, experiment with scraps before accepting the order. Another option is the Rowmark laminate mounted onto acrylic the same color as the core.

[Terry Swift]

Great artcle in A&E Mag May 2010 on doing acrylic. Many different ways and all provide some differing results; but the bottom line per the article is that you don't want to puddle the paint in the engraved portion, as upon cleanup around it will cause some paint in the text pool to be removed and not leave it clean looking. Put just enough paint in to fill the bottom and sides. Check the article as it has lots of good info.

[Rodne Gold]

The secret is to use meths as a clean up agent , you can flood fill , scrape off excess with stiff card and use a meths moistened lint free cloth wrapped round a flat surface to clean. Meths will remove excess yet not dull the shiny paint surface or scoop out paint in large area fills. I use automotive type duco paints for filling from stainless steel right to perspex (except clear - where solvents can cause crazing - I use a water based acrylic paint - yet still use methylated spirits to clean)
Paint filling take a little practice - but works REAL well once you get into it - we do lots and lots of it every day.
Essential to success is to remove as much excess paint as possible when its still wet.

[Frank Corker]

I found that the most reliable method is that described by Rodney above. That's same method I use and I always use acrylic paint for the best results.

[Terry Swift]

Rodne / Frank,

I think car type paints would be awesome for color filling and if I did a lot of it; then maybe worth the extra expense and time for clean-up purposes - not to mention the use of very strong and toxic materials like MEK or others in the same group. We used MEK pretty extensively in the Air Force to clean aircraft with (not it's intended purpose by any means) before and after Hazardous Waste became the environmental issue it did. Before HW, nobody really used many safety precautions; but after HW - you had to dawn so much protective gear, it was not worth the time to use MEK.

Even just using spray bombs makes living on the wild side. Acrylics are easier to use; but I find they don't produce the best color / brightness effect I'd like to see.

Many thanks for years of insight, testing, and trials to provide to us short-timers in the biz.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Thank you for all the suggestions. I'll definitely have to start experimenting more. Out of curiosity, do you generally leave on the mask that comes with the acrylic or do you take it off and apply your own? I usually leave the mask on that came with the acrylic but I also use TransferRite's 782U on most of our laserable plastics. I'm thinking of trying TransferRite's on the acrylic sometime, I think it may be less tacky.

[Larry Bratton]

Thank you for all the suggestions. I'll definitely have to start experimenting more. Out of curiosity, do you generally leave on the mask that comes with the acrylic or do you take it off and apply your own? I usually leave the mask on that came with the acrylic but I also use TransferRite's 782U on most of our laserable plastics. I'm thinking of trying TransferRite's on the acrylic sometime, I think it may be less tacky.

Liesl:
You might be careful about the mask that comes on the acrylic. Just because it's on acrylic doesn't mean it's laser safe. I thought that would be a great thing until I talked to the supplier and found out the protective sheet contained PVC.

[Rodne Gold]

We use the paper based vinyl application tape as masks - resists most paints but comes off easy when wet.
I even use it for sand blasting (tho extended blasting will go thru it) as when lasered it leaves a residue and when blasting we know that the frosting is good when we see the residue clear in the blasting cabinet.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Liesl:
You might be careful about the mask that comes on the acrylic. Just because it's on acrylic doesn't mean it's laser safe. I thought that would be a great thing until I talked to the supplier and found out the protective sheet contained PVC.

It's a paper tape on the acrylic so I would like to think that it doesn't contain any PVC. I have engraved through it before but it seems like it needs a few passes to cut through the tape.

[Larry Bratton]

It's a paper tape on the acrylic so I would like to think that it doesn't contain any PVC. I have engraved through it before but it seems like it needs a few passes to cut through the tape.

Yes, that's good. However, I get acrylic with a clear (blue) plastic like mask on it. Comes off easily, a lot more so than the paper type. That was what I was referring to.

[Bren Kano]

Air brushing might work on a budget using a base coat for lighter colors.