spray on sub coating

[arthur.daley]

Hi All

I am sorely tempted to have a go at spraying some of my own substrates with an aerosol polyester spray - a little personal project I have in mind.

Has anyone here had a go at this? I remember seeing cans of polyester spray on a web site at about £15 a pop but damned if I can think which supplier - any suggestions?

I would appreciate any advice offered that specifically pertains to polyester coatings.




regards



Arthur

[spongerobinson]

http://www.megauk.com/sublimation/subli ... atings.php

I think that might be the supplier you are talking about, however it's not something I've ever tried so can't talk about how well it works.

[pisquee]

We gave it a go, but decided that the extra cost of the spray (which isn't cheap for the amount of coverage you get per can) and labour involved, that it really wasn't worth it.
In the new year, after Top Drawer, we're going to be approaching local factories to find out who is going to be best suited to do it for us.

[NikGrey]

I need to look into this for a project, I need to find the composition of this as I am sure it is probably a simple recipe - just re-badged and sold at a premium for Sublimation Coating. I want to be spraying large area's using my paint gear.

It can't simply be Polyester matt white paint !

The main problem I see so-far (apart from finding the actual material to use for the sublimation coating) is the fact that you seem to have to bake this before you can use it.

This is certainly an area we all need to consider, maybe coming up with a 'DSF Formulation'..

[arthur.daley]

http://www.megauk.com/sublimation/subli ... atings.php

I think that might be the supplier you are talking about, however it's not something I've ever tried so can't talk about how well it works.

Hi

Thanks for the heads up, its not the same site but its either the same or similar stuff and at the same price as I saw it before. However Megauk are all of 10 miles from where I am sitting at the moment so they certainly score well for convenience.


Arthur

[arthur.daley]

Hi Nik

Curing shouldn't bee too big an issue - it can be done in a domestic oven - so long as the wife is out for the afternoon ;o) I well remember a bloke I used to work with putting an old british crankcase into his oven at home to try and drive out all the oil in a crack before handing it over to me to try and weld the crack up -it stank to high heaven. Not just the oven but the smell permeated the whole house and especially into every soft furnishing!

160 centigrade isn't so hot and the objects you want to coat can't be too big otherwise you won't get them into your press in one hit (not sure that trying to do multiple hits would work anyway)

I spoke to Megauk and the coverage from a can is 2 square metres which is quite a big area from a can but if you have to put two coats on and then have to put the UV protector coat on top, plus the costs of the pre spray cleaner the cost per square meter is going to be fairly steep and thats before you have run a stack of samples to get temp/time/pressure sorted - no recommendations from the supplier here methinks, plus of course there will be the inevitable cock ups and coating problems.

If you get anywhere with finding a suitable spray on material I'd be very interested although I don't need it to be white, for my application it would need to be clear.

The real issue of all this would be - how stable (to UV I guess) and scratch resistant the finished item would be.


Arthur

[pisquee]

It needs to be a polymer based spray on coating, which is happy to be heated to over 200 degrees C, so not just a standard white polymer paint, but one made for high temperatures. That would be a starting point. We gave up, as we were too busy to faff with it ourselves, but still interested in finding a local factory that can do it for us, as we have a number of products we'd like to develop.

We did try curing in our oven, and it didn't smell good!

[sublimetals_nicci]

Hi - we worked with a manufacturer of spray coatings (they did all sorts of powder coating in a large factory) for a number of weeks ourselves, as they were keen to spray there own sublimation blanks (they were going to create steel signs) and we were keen to see if they could be done! However after many samples passed back and forth with different formulations which in the end were sublimating well, they couldn't find a formulation that the transfer paper didn't stick to :frown: It was very frustrating, we tried all types of paper from Trupix to Texprint and even Megauk's especially expensive paper that they sell that is supposed to not stick to their plastic business cards... nothing worked - you could soak the printed metal and sit and peel the layers of paper off but it always left a kind of water mark that didn't look right...

So it looks like its a bit more difficult than it sounds...

In the past I have also sold and used the Two part mix. We had similar problems with paper sticking and had to experiment with the amount of time we left the items to cure between painting and baking and baking and printing...a customer who was in a humid climate had problems getting the coating too cure at all. When we finally sussed the paper sticking problems we got a half decent print but then had the brush marks showing problem - this may be helped by spraying - the problem there was getting the consistency of the mixture correct to go in astray gun... The digicoat system removes this problem for you, but adds the 'more expensive price per metre' problem lol

So my advice to customers asking about the diy coatings has always been - if an item is available already coated, always buy that, always going to be cheaper (and far less frustrating) than diy. If an item isn't available coated it then has to be something you have a good market for - one with good mark up (the kinda one-off individual 'art' market) to make it worth your while (in cost of materials to experiment with and the time involved...) The lack of consistency in results really means it is unsuited for mass production techniques...

Love to be proved different though!:biggrin:

Nicci

[arthur.daley]

Hi Nicci

Thats pretty much the market I had in mind, one off or very small batch 'art' type works on a hand made substrate. I will have to speak to Megauk and ask about paper sticking as that would cause quite a problem.


regards

Arthur

[sublimetals_nicci]

In answer to your other query about UV stable - again I can only go on my own experience of sublimation inks and that is that they are not very UV stable at all. The makers of digicoat sell a UV protection spray but understandably can't give any indication about how much longer the print will last before fading as there are too many variables to take into consideration. I have gate signs on my property in yorkshire (which admittedly isn't the sunniest county lol) which are black text on white metal. They have been up just under 5 years - in that time they faded from 100% black to roughly 75% black in one year and then to about 30% black in the next 4 years - I replaced them in the summer and within 3 months I noticed they were already fading - I had taken a can of digicoat UV spray up that summer intending to test one of the new signs, but sod's law, didn't check it before I went and the spray valve was missing when I opened it! so will have to try next summer now ! Anyone else got any experiences to share using UV spray?