Printing on Plastic Card

[NYC Irish]

Hello Gang

I was just wondering if anyone here has any experience or thoughts on printing parts from our kinds of kits onto plastic card..like Evergreen or Plastruct etc....

Not worried about quality as I would just need the shape to cut out


Any one tried it before?

John John

[rmks2000]

Haven't attempted it yet. I imagine you would need a printer that had a straight through feeder.

I have on one or two occasions simply cut out the card part and traced it onto the plastic. This worked well for biplane wing struts and made the models more durable for handling. You could also use rubber cement to temporarily affix the card to it.

[NYC Irish]

Yeah I have the printer and it can take some substantial paper/plastic thicknesses but its inkjet and that smudges before I can cut it..

Im actually trying to cut lines drawn in auotcad…I think I just need to do it the old fashioned way ..

Others suggestions welcome but ,major thanks anyway

John John

[clif52]

I wonder if you could spray the plastic with a matte finish spray and then print it? After it prints seal it again with another coat? Sounds like it might work. I've seen poster printers that print with a solvent ink that will dry on plastic, vinyl, and clear static cling. The smallest one I've seen is 36 inches wide.

Clif

[paperbeam]

Couldn't you print onto a full-page size label with adhesive backing and then affix that to a plastic backer (probably a bit tricky)? If I recall correctly, this has been done with some success by modelers...

Terry

Ping-Pong Ball Cannon and N/Z scale Old West paper models (free samples) at: paperbeam - virtual paper models

[jaffro]

Or maybe you could try printing to something thin but durable, something that isn't going to tear when peeled off... then stick it to the plastic using one of those "repositionable" (sorry, the proper word escapes me right now) spray adhesives.

eg: Print to paper, adhere to plastic, cut along the lines, peel off the paper, clean up the plastic.

Something like paperbeam suggested would probably work the same way, you could possibly peel it off later, it just depends on what the adhesive does to the plastic.

[charliec]

I knew I'd seen a thread on this before - LCT Hull Construction Page 1

Suggests printing directly on plastic sheet then fixing the print with Inkjet fixative.

Regards,

Charlie

[NYC Irish]

Thanks all and definetly thanks Charlie.

Will actually be in Dunline tomorrow which is the only city in Ireland with a Jessops Photo Shop so I hope they have some of that spray..

Thanks lads excellent resource

John John

[Dave Treby]

You can buy over hear projector slides which can be used with an ink jet printer. They're thin and transparent so if you just need the shape it should be esy enough to fix them to plastic card to cut out.
They must have other model uses, too, but I haven't thought of it until now.
Dave

[NYC Irish]

Well

Oh oh...That wasnt Dunline...it should have read Dublin..and just to let anyone who might be looking for Jessops they have closed their only Republic of Ireland store as of 3 days before I got there...Timing is everything isnt it?

Im still open to suggestions if anyone has them?

John John

[CJTK1701]

I think sticker paper is the way to go, unless you can get ahold of a plotter that will indent the styrene.

Good luck. I used sticker paper as a template to cut windows for a 22" TOS Enterprise. Worked great.

[redhorse]

Wow, I'd never thought of sticker paper. I used to scratch build a lot of WWI aircrraft subjects and glued photo copies of plans onto the plastic card with elmers.

Sticker paper would be perfect - you could probably just soak it over night in detergent and it would come right off.

[CJTK1701]

Originally Posted by redhorse

Wow, I'd never thought of sticker paper. I used to scratch build a lot of WWI aircrraft subjects and glued photo copies of plans onto the plastic card with elmers.

Sticker paper would be perfect - you could probably just soak it over night in detergent and it would come right off.

The sticker paper I used came right off without soaking. All you had to do was clean it up with a little alcohol and a cotton swab.

[Jim Nunn]

I have had good success with printing on 0.010 and 0.015 styrene with a laser printer. Be careful the laser sets the ink power with heat and you could end up with melted plastic in guts of the printer. I would think that this would be more of a problem with the thinner plastics.

Jim Nunn

[Gil]

John John,

Just get some acrylic matte spray. Spray the sheet styrene with the matte spray, allowing it to dry, then print out your graphic on it using the grayscale only printer setting (uses black inkjet only). This may take a little experimentation to get the right print settings such as overhead foil, super gloss photo paper etc. Let the ink dry before over spraying with the acrylic matte spray to seal and protect the ink layer.

+Gil