Friday, May 15, 2015

laser cured powder coat on acrylic




































Lionel Rocheleau is one of my lab technicians in the DCRL. This semester he was interested in doing some laser cutter investigations during his laser technician "down time". We discussed the use of powder coat with laser engraving on acrylic and he made the above samples. The piece of acrylic is first engraved with a raster pattern at standard speed/power and then powder coat power is placed on the piece and the operation is re-run but at a higher speed and lighter power. The result is a cured/fused powder on top of the acrylic. The results are really quite nice and it appears to look like colored acrylics. He also experimented with layering the powder to see what effects he could achieve. The ability to precisely "color" ares on the acrylic is so great. Lionel is going to work toward his completion of a BA in Digital Fabrication and Design. He has just completed his Art and Design First Year course work so I look forward to seeing his progress in the DCRL.



4 comments:

  1. Hi Frankie!

    Fantastic post. Just curious, what is the powder you used to do this? Is it some sort of dye? I'll be sharing this on Hack a Day and would love to give our readers a bit more information about how to do this.

    Thanks,
    James

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi James,

    The powder is powder coat powder is from Caswell or Eastwood.

    http://www.eastwood.com/paints/hotcoat-powder-coating/powders.html
    http://www.caswellplating.com/paints-and-coatings/powder-coating.html

    You can read more about Powder Coating Here:
    https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0lYyB55L5cRUjlJYWp1TFNSams

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks +Salya Fateh. You are welcome to link to the post!

    ReplyDelete