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WATERSLIDE DECAL (LAZERTRAN PAPER)

A while back I discovered a really excellent product that does essentially the same job as Dynart paper ..only the results are really superior and it's far easier to work with.

It’s a water-slide decal (ie graphic transfer on a transparent plastic substrate) paper called Laztertran and can be bought in small quantities (A4 or A3) from ( http://www.lazertran.com/ ).
There are several advantages this paper offers. First the coating for the water-slide decal is already on the paper. Secondly it is a very thin decal (about 15 microns). The result of this is that the clear part of the decal is almost invisible when its dried on your panel. Also it's pretty strong and doesn't easily break when you are placing it onto your panel. Thirdly, these decals were made so that on heat proof surfaces like metal, you can heat the panel+decal in an oven so that the decal melts onto the surface..making a very hard waterproof finish.

Once you have produced the panel artwork file you print ‘master copies’ onto photoquality inkjet paper or colour laserprints or what have you. Then the idea behind lazertran paper is to colour photocopy (or colour laserprint) your artwork, in mirror format,

onto the lazertran paper. Since I used A4 sheets of lazertran (A3 is also available) in my projects..I had to split my panel graphic over several A4 sheets. Then being very careful..its possible to cut each piece exactly so as to allow perfect registration of them onto the front panel. Each sheet is soaked in cold water..then you can slide off the decal after 1 minute.

This is then placed on the top panel in reverse (ie toner side down)..thus producing a correctly oriented image of your artwork. Do this for all remaining sheets of the artwork and carefully register them to form a seemless final image on the frontpanel.

Now the magic begins! The reason you have toner side down is that you can now bond the decal to your top panel by heating in a conventional oven. The heating process literally melts the decal and it bonds to the painted surface (or even bare metal if you wish). This process takes about 1 hour. Check out the lazertran website for tips on this process.You have to do it slowly to get best results. One word of warning! If you are using a painted surface..take care not to overheat the paint otherwise you get paint bubbles forming! I had this problem to some extent in my

front panel..the temperature was a little too high. Best thing is to keep monitoring the panel . As soon as the surface becomes very shiny..its done. You may still se tiny bubbles in the

final finish. No problem..these are removed by the process I discuss below.

After leaving your panel cool down..you should find an amazing bonding of the decal..its very hard and the toner is complelely protected from scratches etc. The finish is very close to silkscreen.

Since the finish is very glossy…I prefered to remove this gloss. One easy way is to use ultra-fine wire wool and some abrasive cream ..and very gently rub the gloss finish down to a ‘satin’ finish. This may sound crazy..but the toner image is protected (remember you reversed it!) by the clear plastic base of the decal..so there is no danger of

damaging it with this process. This process also removes small bubbles in the decal that can sometimes remain near the surface, leaving a smooth surface. You might also find some little pinholes hear and there in the finish. If these are visible on the coloured parts..simply

spot them off with a permenant ink pen of matching colour. You can then add a final transparent matt lacquer overcoating if you wish.

Eventually I got a perfectly satin finish this way..its really an amazing method, and the only one I know of that can produce a near-silkscreen finish for artwork that you simply could not do eg using Shaeffer made panels..because engraving has its limitations!

Here is what you can achieve with this method:-