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CNC painting system, another silly idea?

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JerryNotts:
After more years than I like to remember much of that time spent in coating industry labs. in the UK, I can no longer resist trying to offer you some remarks on misconceptions about the nature of the various formulations of inks and paints.

1. Both paints and inks can usually be divided into three main groups a) air drying eg decorative paints as you would use at home, inks for ball point pens etc.  b) 'Stoving' paints and inks, tin cans have examples of both, base coats applied by rollercoating and printing inks applied by a printing press. Many other industrial items are 'stoved'. c) Powder eg the toner in a laser printer, or the paint used nowadays in pipe manufacture . These examples are not exhaustive.

The signs you are trying to produce would normally be screen printed. Look up the process on Wikipedia. The inks have if intended for air drying, until recently been based on NC  and containing some fairly strong solvents such as ketones and/or esters.

Your main problem would seem to be preparing suitable screens for the images which you want. This is the expensive part of the job. Once you have the screens and a suitable ink (the principle property is the pasty viscosity) for the surface you want to print on, the rest of the items can be made at home. Screen printing is almost a cottage industry, only those that have contracts from for example the Highways agency or from motor manufacturers ( dash board instrument graphics) are well set-up.

I have never seen sprayed graphics give a decent result.

There are some on-line suppliers of screen printing materials, maybe it would be worth while speaking to them.

I don't want to be 'wet-blanket' but I hope this might set you off in the right direction.

Jerry

vtsteam:
John just a silly thought but if the new airbrush doesn't work out, what about possibly making your own paint marker type brush with some hard felt and an open tube reservoir?

John Hill:
Thanks for the information Jerry.

As nothing is yet off the table completely I may end up screen printing but at this time that is a dark art to me. Nonetheless, in the future maybe.

There seems to be a delay in the delivery of my second airbrush and after a period of cogitation I am now considering a brush system. 

A small paint brush mounted on a mechanism so that it can be lowered to contact the work or raised and dipped in a shallow container of paint.  The mechanics are not difficult but integrating it into the CNC-GCode system caused me to lay awake for a while when I should have been sleeping. 

There is limited scope for tapping into the Arduino-GRBL but there are pause and reset pins plus a second Arduino which was set up for the airbrush.  I will put software on the second Arduino to at intervals pause the machine motion and cycle the brush through Up-Dip-Down then restart the machine.


Hmmm...this is MadModders after all. :lol:

 

vtsteam:
 :proj:

That's the spirit!

tom osselton:
[That sounds like a scene from the movie “ Hugo “

A small paint brush mounted on a mechanism so that it can be lowered to contact the work or raised and dipped in a shallow container of paint.  The mechanics are not difficult but integrating it into the CNC-GCode system caused me to lay awake for a while when I should have been sleeping. 
[/quote]

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