rosewood wine box and color filling

[Mike Null]

Ross,

I've yet to see a mask that didn't need some weeding. What do you do with o's, a's, p's.q's etc?

[Ross Moshinsky]

I put the masking down. Traditionally you'd vector cut and then weed. I simply raster right through the masking. I basically do 2 passes. Normally 100pwr and maybe 40 speed. Between the two passes it removes all the masking and then the second pass I get my necessary depth. Afterwards all I have to do is spray the paint. I'm sure it's a longer engraving process this way but again, I don't have to weed and I also don't have to worry about plaque placement on my table. It's fairly idiot proof.

[Mike Null]

Ross

Back to my question. How do you avoid weeding? All parts of the mask must be removed.

[Dee Gallo]

Ross, I can't understand what you are doing. If your rastering removes ALL masking, how are you confining the paint... it seems the entire surface must be rastered. And what's the use of the masking then?

WAIT - I just got it... you were thinking that everyone vector cuts the mask like a vinyl cutter would, right? Hence the weeding. So the answer to Mike is that yes, you do still have to remove masking material after painting. Which is what we also call weeding, even if it isn't exactly correct. Is that right or am I still missing something?

cheers, dee

[Terry Swift]

I agree with Ross. In most of my work like I posted, the laser tape is rastered thru into the actual piece to provide the depth needed to paint / coat. On larger fonts it's no problem removing the tape inside letters, etc. Now when it gets into finer detail, where there are lots of little pieces of tape to cover the don't want painted areas - then the picking becomes tedious & time consuming.

I did try a different way today with some mixed results. I first oiled the piece and masked off as much as I could with tape, then painted the area. Using the way I was told to do on acrylic - I wiped the paint off the piece using Oops oil based product. Several wipes necessary to get it all off; but then it can also start taking off the coating on the Rosewood or Piano Finish boxes (MDF coated ones). It also created kind of a dull area right in the area where there was no tape; but used some Pledge to help restore it. I'm sure something else works better; but it was what I had on hand at the time.

I haven't used DNA to clean up with, but if it works well, saves time, and doesn't destroy the finish - I'm all for that process.

[Levi Chanowitz]

can you tell us how the powdercoat system works?