I’m building a board with epoxy and carbon fiber. I want to do a cotton print inlay and some rice paper graphics which both include the color white, but in the test samples I tried the carbon is too dark of a background and everything comes out looking like dirt.
I’ve read here you can spray the back of ricepaper graphics with white spray paint for graphics that need white in them, can I do the same thing with the cotton inlay or with the much larger area is there a big risk of delamination in the future?
How many coats of spray paint would one normally use on ricepaper to get a nice solid white? I assume the coats would have to be fairly light in order to prevent the paint from bleeding through the paper/fabric?
I spray the backs of my logos with krylon to provide a white background and also to opaque the colors from the printer more. The rice paper is very heavyweight. My logos are about 7" x 10", and I use two very, very light coats. When dry, I lightly sand the painted surface wih 320 and then cut out the logo. I’ve been very successful with this on poly boards, but never done it with epoxy. In any case, painting the back of any fabric probably isn’t a good idea since it will likely bleed thru the otherside. Can you mask the board and paint it in the selective areas?
Thanks for the info, Pete. I am trying to avoid masking and painting since it will mean doing extra steps in in the laminating process and also prevent the epoxy from chemically bonding with the previous lamination. Also the area with the cotton inlay is quite large and I think I would have less chance of delamination if the paint were sort of imbeded in some fiber, rather than a solid thin layer in between the laminations.
I guess I will try a few more test samples with lighter and fewer coats. I tried some last night with 3-4 light coats on the cotton and rice paper, ricepaper came out ok but there was some bleed through on the cotton where I used more paint.