Anyone ever try printing on sheet plastic?

As Jon_a_its  suggested earlier inthe thread, you could use A4 laser labels & then stick them onto whatever you like.

Avery "heavy duty" laser labels are plastic & come in A4, not sure how they would react to paint, but you may not even have to remove then from the styrene sheet. Have used this method on many occasions for POS material, although never for modeling.

 

Here is a link to someone scratchbuilding a WWII Landing Craft by creating the plans in 3d modelling software and using an inkjet printer to print them onto styrene sheet.

http://www.kipperboxes.co.uk/html/lct_mk_4.html

 

There is another possibility.  I got this idea from an inexpensive way to do etching.  I've been meaning to try it for etching parts.  I know it works for etching circuit boards.  Anyhow, use high gloss laser photo paper in your laser printer.  Print the image out in the highest quality, and do it reversed.  Then lay it printed side down ony our medium and use a household iron(pick up a 5 dollar cheapo from walmart or something, or else the missus might be using it to iron your head), and then use the iron to transfer the printed image to the medium.  It works on brass, and with some experimentation with some styrene capable of handling a slightly higher temp, I am sure it is possible to transfer the toner to the styrene.  At least if it ruisn the styrene you are out only the cost of a sheet of styrene and a sheet of glossy photo paper.  You can always use the rest of the photo paper for photo's or making etched parts.  Using this with a color laser printer it is probably even possible to make colored etched parts.  I have a B&W laser so I can't test this.

Well there are those clear plastic sheets you can use for making transparancies (for the ancient overhead projectors you remember from grade school) but you have to be sure to get the ones labeled for laser printers as they can take the higher temperatures. Not sure what you could build out of something that flimsy, though.

Gary55 wrote:

I've been kicking around the idea of printing plans, or even print off a paper model on to sheet styrene and use it as a basis of a model. Unfortunately, my home printer is an inkjet that foldes the paper back at itself.  Seems a laser that has a straight feed in might work using a VERY thin sheet. Anyone ever give this a try?   Gary Bonolo

I used to do it all the time with clear plastic sheets. Used a laser printer, and was able to scale the drawings to whatever I wanted.

gary

The toner from laser printers works pretty well as a pattern transfer. There are two methods that I have used in metal work that have worked pretty well. FIrst, reverse your plans and print using a laser printer. Lay the paper on your surface and attach securely. I then take acetone or mineral spirits and wet the paper. A roller back and forth across the surface and carefully lift away the paper. The toner transfers to the surface. Another method is to use an iron and gradualy heat the surface. THe toner will transfer the same way but not as reliably. You may have to connect some lines. (If you've ever left a laser printed or xeroxed document face down on a vinyl seat of your car or on a vinyl notebook in your car in the summer, you'll see this little bit of magic easy enough.......)

I have also printed my plans to paper and then using spray glue attached the plans to the surface of the plastic. Now you just cut the lines as necessary and a little bit of mineral spirits removes the paper from the plastic. As long as the paper is attached to the part you also have easy id labels for the parts till you're ready to use them.

I print on sheet styrene all the time, but I work in the sign business and have access to a printer that most people don't: a Vutek solvent-based UV cured flatbed inkjet printer. We print signs on 4x8 foot sheets of .060 and then cut them apart, it didn't take me too long to make the connection and think about printing custom model plans directly to the plastic. It works great for the large scale work I do, and I can do thickness down to .020, though with the lighter material we run the risk of melting the plastic with the UV lamps.

This would be an expensive proposition if you didn't have free access, however. My company charges a base price of $13 a square foot for styrene, and of course there's usually a minimum job charge. This printer is 20 feet long, has a 10 foot wide bed and costs about $350,000, so they have to pay for it somehow. I just bring up my experience to let you know that your idea is quite sound, just finding a reliable, economical technology to impement it is the challenge.

I reccomend that any modeller, especially that insane breed called scratchbuilders, investigate local sign shops to see what they can do for you. If nothing else, you can probably walk out with an armfull of free styrene from their scrap pile!

OK,OK so it's not such a bright idea! Thought I would kick it out here and see if anyone else had persuded the same line of thought. Why did I want to try it? Because it's there of course!

Gary Bonolo

Back to trying something not insane. (Did I mention my current build is a Roller Coaster?) 

 

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't laser printers actually melt the ink into the paper?  Slipping a sheet of stryrene in one strikes me as a very bad idea.

Gary 55 - Don't do it.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Thanks for testing it out! I thought the ink drying would be the biggest problem. It just occurred to me that maybe printing off the project on a sheet of decal paper as a intermidiate step would work, then using the decal on the plastic sheet. I did read on one of the paper modeling forums that someone was printing on stick-on labels. They then used them to transfer the design to sheet metal. If you guys our into scratch building checkout some of the paper model sites. They are doing some amazing stuff with it, plus you can download and print off from your desktop. No law saying you have to build them out of paper.   

Gary Bonolo 

 

I would be very careful using a laser printer, as they use a heated drum to fixate the toner and this might just melt the plastic sheet (with possibly very expensive repairs). This happens if you e.g. take an inkjet OH sheet in a laser printer.

But I like the idea of using a card model as a base, I have had the same myself but not realized it yet.

Good luck and happy modelling!

//Viktor Karlsson 

After reading this, I decided to try it. I took a .010 sheet styrene and ran it through a regular deskjet printer like the one you have and it fed through with ease. It could probally do up to .030 sheet styrene with little effort. The only problem is the ink isn't drying on the slick surface of the plastic. Tomorrow I will see if decal bonder or clear coat can seal it completely.

Gary,

I've never tried it, but it sounds like a feasible idea.  Hopefully, someone will post whether they've tried it or not and if it works or not.