Making front panels designs with lazertran / fotocal?

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matta

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 11, 2005
Messages
1,640
Location
Cape Town, South Africa
Hey Guys,

I checked out this link: http://monopole.ph.qmw.ac.uk/~thomas/synthdiy/frontpanel.htm and am pretty keen to try out making a lazertran / fotocal design for my new Greens that I will be racking up shortly.

My question is this, how does one make white? Obviously if the panel is black and you want to transfer white decals onto it how do you go about this? Anyone have any ideas?

I can't go to the expensive of shipping my panel from Africa to either Europe or the US for the front panel and thought this might be a pretty good work around, and more flexible than engraving

Cheers

Matt
 
[quote author="matta"]how does one make white?[/quote]

You can't. Sorry :?.

Peace,
Al.
 
Find a way to make a copy machine or lazerprinter spit out white toner.
It should be possible, filling an old cartridge with the right kind of white toner. I nice DIY project if you ask me.
It won't be easy though...
Also, if your front panel is painted make sure it (the paint) can withstand the 200 C when baking the lazertran.
 
I was bumbed about white and after jamming two copiers I almost gave up, but the third worked. Then I exactly followed the directions, and I can tell you, with black, if you cook it to 200c, you'll "cook" it alright.
Something I noticed after trying to do my 1176 the otherday is that there is a 24 hour dryon cold method.
We noticed the colors kicked some serias but for the first hour, on the lowest temp and that looked a ok to me. Yellow and bright green at that point would pull it off. which is what I'm going to try on my calrec, hopefully tommorow so I'll take picutres if it works.
and from now on, no black for me, love it for the case, but not for the front. then I can do try doing full color fronts.
long term though, I don't know, lazertran might be kind of cheezy. if I could get nice bright brillant color after it withstood 200c, sure, but I just don't but that because most of the colors started to fade. So, I don't know, it's one of those things I think you have to try. On my first one I experimented, and in the color's for the lazer printer I had rgb settings 255, 255, 255 for white, so I set the entire background white to rid the printer from trying to print anything and then I made it print several of the ligtest shades it could in some of the text as an experiment. But again, much like the street or other such things that go with black, black/yellow, black/orange, black/green.

The other thing I will try from now on too is using a normal transparancy over the top first too for shading, it looks the same before the baking.

If you don't mind the glossy look, and trust me that looked just about the same as the baked look, the low temp or try method might be what is doable with black.. But I have 2 more faceplates to try it with that I have finished gear for, after that I'm just not going to bother trying black.
 
Hey Guys,

Thanks for all the feedback. The more I investigate I seem to think dry transfers might be the best to have white on black, or no legend at all, which might be the way to start.

Thanks

Matt
 
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