hello don,

> First and foremost, I am very skeptical, of the whole idea, of putting
> fiberglass through a printer. The thought of what might happen to your
> printer if the glass cloth started to unravel in the printer is enough to
> give me the heebee-geebees.

your skeptisizm is no different than many other people. some people print for living, & they try everything,& if it works they have a new application they can sell. some things might work with one printer & not with another, but sooner or later - it works !

> Second fiberglass does not strike me as a real good image substrate.
> Fiberglass has a very uneven surface.

you're right, the uneven surface of the glass cloth (and any other textile material) does makes life harder, but people do print on different textiles, including glass cloth.

This could degrade the quality of
> the image. Also normally the glass disappears when wetted out. However
> when it is printed on the colored ink could show the weave after the glass
> has been wetted. Finally fiberglass can be stretched unevenly when it is
> wetted out. This would cause the image to be distorted.

here's another reason not to print on glass cloth: the image will come out beautiful & perfect & then on a sunny shiny sunday morning while you are paddling, you'll encounter a great white shark & he will bite your beautiful kayak with the perfect image on it - & all because it was printed with an ink jet printer ! what a shame..

The glass cloth does turn transparent when wetted with epoxy, as we all know. We also know that the people on this board are extremely intelligent, & one of them will soon come with a solution to this problem. I encountered similar problems in the printing industry & they were solved with the right combination of some new materials somebody invented.

the glass cloth doesn't stretch when heat transfer is used. "heat transfer" means printing on a "transfer paper" & then transferring it to the desired substrate with heat press.

there are types of glass cloth that are very dense & thin. when you touch them they feel like synthetic cloth. it's used for banners that needs to be non flamable !

good luck to us

erez

> As far as what type of ink, dye, or toner to use, here are my thoughts. I
> put these items into three basic categories.

> Wax based Water based Granular Toner

water based ink can be dyed or pigmented & they have different qualities. you didn't covered that in your post, & people might still use one of them & will be eaten by a great white shark, & it will all be your fault !

> The Wax based color systems should be avoided at all costs. It is highly
> likely that they will interfere with the bonding of the epoxy. Wax based
> systems can be found in a lot of printers that lay color down from plastic
> sheets or ribbons. Some Techtronic printers use a waxy crayon like stick
> that it melts and sprays onto substrate. If you run your finger across a
> printed sheet of paper you can feel the raised almost sticky wax from
> these systems.

> Water based inks are what you will find in most "ink jet" type
> printers from HP, Epson, and Cannon. The best way to test is run some
> water on a printed sheet. The ink should dissolve and run. I haven't
> tested these with, epoxy however they should work. They do fade with UV,
> so I would be careful with how I would use them. One thought would be to
> wet them out under your varnish coats rather than under the fiberglass.
> This would allow you to sand out the image when it fades beyond your
> liking.

> Granular toner from a black and white laser-printer is non-waxy, water
> resistant, and fad resistant. It should work well on tissue paper under
> fiberglass. I am not sure about the color based toners, they may be wax
> based.

> Don