Afternoon, thanks for the Youtube videos, helped me alot getting started with infusion.

The question I have is how do people add full colour images to fibreglass parts and on top of carbon parts?

Thanks for any help with this.

Cheers D.

+x

 

Derek Dunning - 2/11/2019 12:58:54 PM

Afternoon, thanks for the Youtube videos, helped me alot getting started with infusion.

The question I have is how do people add full colour images to fibreglass parts and on top of carbon parts?

Thanks for any help with this.

Cheers D.

Derek, 
I do a little bit of that on my model boats. The only way I found out was to use 'rice paper'. That's what they use for patterns and logos on surfboards anyway. I got in touch with a guy in Florida who does this and he made my logo and printed them on the rice paper for me. Now since my background is black I had to add something lighter colored as a background. I found that if I used a piece of scrap honeycomb core as a backer, then put a small scrap of bagging film over the logo it would come out nice and smooth. It took a few tries to get it to look good but you can see it at least. I'd also talk to some of the surfboard shops and see what they say. There may be other ways to do it but that's what I found. You can see here where I got one right and one wrong. 

If you're using epoxy to infuse then you can use any vinyl sticker. You just need to be sure that the resin can flow underneath the sticker to form a closed surface 'skin's over the sticker, otherwise you will end up with dry spots where the sticker is exposed. Basically just means you can't use giant stickers where the resin has to flow 5 or 6 inches under it, or if you are using stickers that big then you may have to put perforations into it. 

Both of these were done this way. 

Hanaldo, that looks awesome. Mine are usually painted so I have to do it on the inside. But that gives me a really good idea for some custom boats. 

For prepreg, we currently work on lightweight paper for labeling.

We face some deformations on printed paper after releasing them by the mold. With release film there occurs defects on the epoxy surface.

Need your kind advice.

Yeh can be tricky to keep the back smooth. I would try placing a separate small piece of release film over the paper and make sure that it goes on smooth with no wrinkles. May also help to use some flash breaker tape all around that piece of release film to prevent any resin bleed underneath, though that likely won't be a problem anyway. Then proceed as you usually do with the layup.