Pedal enclosure prettyfying?

Nicholas-L

been wondering for a while now how do some of you transfer images onto your pedal enclosures without going the silkscreen printing method. How you guys do it at home? After seeing Jeremy's pedal boxes at Saturday's GFSA gathering it got me wondering about the various methods some uses.

JeremyE

Well now...It all depends on how much time, effort and money you'd like to spend.

The two ways I have finished have been:

1: Spray

I took a big cardboard box, installed a light into it and used it as a spray booth so that there was minimal air movement when I sprayed and so that the lighting was good.
I let each layer of spray for at least 24hrs just to make sure it was dry.

Here you have to prep the casing very well! So what I normally do is first give a light water-papering and then use steel wool to really get it smooth finish.
Then I shoot a coating of self etching spray (I've only used off the shelf spray) as a base layer (either black or white depending on whether you want the top coat to be darker or lighter)
Now you can coat the case in the desired color...if you get spatter, you can dab with an earbud very lightly to clean it up, but be very careful, otherwise you'll need to sand the case and start again from scratch...
Now I have a mate that had a vinyl cutter (roland stika vinyl cutter) so I designed and cut the logo's myself (bought all vinyl from maizeys plastics) and then stuck them to the pedal.
I then finally shot one or two layers of clear laquer onto the pedal. I found that on the odd occasion a layer of clear would appear 'milky', I simply let it dry and then shot over it and it came out clear.

2: Etching

Here I used the uv transfer method for pcb's on the case.
First transfer the image to the case
Tape up and area's you dont want etched
place pedal in etchant for a while until casing has been etched sufficiently
wash and dry the case
now shoot whatever colour you want the image to be onto the pedal and let it dry
sand the case with water paper being very careful not to sand the image (color on image will be left behind as its slightly recessed)
finally shoot with clear laquer...

Hope that helps...

Nicholas-L

Thanks man ? will give it a try

deefstes

Nicholas-L

Hahahahaha Dewald love dit. No pics or how to step by step from me as I haven't attempted to do this yet. If you see a massive explosion lots of fire and smoke from this side of world then I probably attempted to do this ? .

However i did find this http://www.aronnelson.com/gallery/main.php/v/MarkMs-Gallery/album24/

http://daqq.eu/index.php?show=prj_al_etching