Another finishing/decal thread.

[Evad Nomenclature]

Hey guys...

There are a few of these thread all around the boards, but I'm going to ask again since I didn't find exactly what I was looking for.

After trying a few different painting methods, I decided to go with the one that looked best; that is, buying powder coated enclosures from small bear and PPP ^_^
I figured I would get a design, transfer it onto the powder coated box and clear coat it after. soooo,
I tried using an iron on decal tonight with a logo and design that my wife had done for the pedal.  Slapped the iron down on that badboy for probably 30-45 seconds and low and behold... paint meltage! (rut roh).  After I let it dry, it still came out *pretty good*. The paint settled back in on the top, but lost it's luster (obviously)
Had that issue with the paint and a little bit of the volume/tone labels for the knobs moving a little bit.

So..?  Would you guys recommend either

A. Using the water based decals?
B. Using the iron on again, but not holding it on as long? (not sure how long it took to melt... and I don't have a temp control on my iron... maybe that's one more thing to buy)

I'm pretty much just making the pedals for myself and a couple of friends, but I still want them to look as professional as possible... I think the whole design, building, and cosmetic part of the procedure is by far the best thing ever... I'm only on my 4th pedal, but man I'm hooked.

[guilds100]

I use laser water slide decal paper for my graphics. They works well but it takes alittle practice getting them onto the box as they are very delicate once the paper is seperated from the decal. Some people use the ink jet version, but I think you have to clear coat those before getting them wet or the ink will run off.

[John Lyons]

Powder coating is baked at 400 degrees to melt the powder into a paint like shell.
The iron must have just remelted the powercoat.
I'd go with water slide decals.
Full face decals will cover the full top of the pedal and be less noticeable as
the edge of the decal sheet is at the edge of the pedal.

Search for "decal" here and you will come up with some info to read.

Wait: What kind of "decal" are you using here that you have to iron on?
T shirt transfer?

john

[MikeH]

You could use a cooking thermometer to heat you iron to say... 325 degrees and then iron on your decal.  That might work out.

[Evad Nomenclature]

Yep,

I used a transparent t-shirt transfer.  I would definitely say that the box was hot as hell after the ironing procedure.
My wife already had a full pack of them for a t-shirt she made so we figured we'd try them. 
Thanks for the info though about the powder coating temp, that's good to know.
I'll have to order up some water decals and check that out.
thx.

[Ice-9]

This is my first attempt at the water slide decal, its on inkjet decal paper. Reasonable results.

[Evad Nomenclature]

That's cool Ice.
It looks pretty solid.  It's also pretty tough to pull that stuff off on the white pedal.  Everything shows up on that.
This is the one that I melted the paint on (with the Iron)
It was actually Ink Jet, Iron on.  Simple design, as you can see, the iron did a number on the paint... (almost done pic, waiting for damn 100k pots, I thought I had some left =/  )




You can tell the orange logo got sort of melted into the yellow powder coat.  Also, the blue is pretty damn smudgy on the front.
Just ordered some of the laser water decals from SBE, hopefully that will do the trick.

[Ice-9]

I really like the way the orange has melted into the yellow. The decal paper is quite good but you do get a sticker type of look from it even after clear coating as you can see better in trhis pic, and of course if you try and print anything with a light colour the colour of the pedal itself will tint it. White is even worse as it prints clear, again you can see this in the pic the stanley fx logo is meant to be white but it shows orange, but it matches at least. lol

[davent]

Hello,

If you keep clearcoating you can make the decal outline, dissappear. I usually put on about seven coats of clear lacquer then start wet sanding with 800 grit paper to level it all. Four or five more coats lacquer, more wet sanding and on and on, they will become invisible, it just takes lots of coats and then lots of sanding.



dave