[sdiy] Re: AlumaJet III

[Harry Bissell Jr]

Update on the printable aluminum sheets for
front panels.

I have had pretty good success with the .005" thick
AlumaJet product.  I'm doing silver lettering on a
black background, so the ink jet printer has to do a
lot
of coverage. 

The density of the black is pretty good... there are
some
slight lines from the printer, even at an alleged
1440dpi.
You might want to experiment with different
'dithering'
patterns... I used "erorr diffusion" which gives
slight hroizontal banding  (one line of ink is dry
before the next is printed... you would get the same
effect painting a wall with a roller and allowing the
paint to dry) and also "fine dithering" which looks
like a  speckle or swirl finish, also
attractive.

You need to watch carefully when the sheets feed... I
had one 'hang up'  (a $5 mistake).  

I had some slight decrease in the length of the
printing... a nine inch panel might be shy .050" I
assume from slight slippage in my printer.

I also tried some colors to show normalized
patches...yellow and orange were readable...but a
little undersaturated for my taste. More like a candy
finish... semi-transparent. Not bad at all.

If you did black or dark colors on an aluminum
background it would be a lot easier, and no color
banding would show.

I think its a pretty good product imho. Holes cit
easily with a sharp x-acto knife... and the hardest
part (for me) is getting a good smooth coat of lacquer
over it as protection.

H^) harry



--- Synthmanic at aol.com wrote:
> Hello Harry,
> 
> How are the printable aluminum sheets going? Any
> luck?
> 
> DW