HOW TO FOIL

 

Toner Reactive Foils (TRF) have one very unique property of sticking to anything that is plastic when subjected to heat and pressure. Conventional toner that is used in all laser printers and photo-copiers is comprised of about 55% plastic. It is this plastic within the black or color toner that makes this all work beautifully. (NOTE: BROTHER® brand laser printers do NOT use conventional styrene plastic and because of this does not play well with our foils and those of other manufacturing. All other brands of laser printer use conventional toner.)

 

PRESSURE IS "KING":

Although it's possible to use a household iron to make foils transfer to your printed images on very light-weight papers, your results can be less than perfect due to the very low pressure you can manually deliver over the iron and you can't apply "shear-force" (which will be described in a moment) necessary to get perfect transfers over uneven or textured paper surfaces. Even applying your entire body weight over the iron is minimal at best, so we highly recommend using a "pouch laminator" available at all office supply stores. We recommend one in particular which does an extremely good job and is one of the few laminators on the market that will also work with our main product called "DecalProFX" (for making dry-transfers graphics to 3-dimensional objects).

 

CARRIER BOARD:

When sending your foil covered print through the laminator, roller pressure needs to be perpendicular to what's being passed through, otherwise, the flexible paper and more flexible foil can easily "weave" itself through the unit resulting in less than ideal transfer quality. Our "CarrierBoard" is made of .020" fiberglass and will last indefinitely. Our "TRF Sampler Pack" of all foils included a CarrierBoard! If you order individual full-length foils, you will need to get the CarrierBoard which is available as a separate item on our shopping cart. Note: You can temporarily use a piece of "chipboard" as the CarrierBoard. Chipboard is the thin backing on all notepads. Over time however, this chipboard will compress after every pass and will start to loose it's original semi-rigid state. We highly recommend the fiberglass board as it's much more rigid and will never wear out.

 

TWO WAYS TO TRANSFER FOILS:

• Raw Foil Over The Toner Print: Lay the toner print over the Carrier Board, then position the print at the top of the board. Next cover the print with the selected foil shade with an extra inch to wrap around the leading edge of the Carrier Board. When inserted, the laminator's pressure-rollers will grab everything together (Carrier Board, print and foil) so nothing can slip, then as soon as it's inserted, pull back on the tail of the foil to prevent wrinkles from forming over the print.

 

• Carrier Board with Mylar Foil - forming an "envelope": This is the preferred method because you use less foil. A  clear Mylar film is attached to the back of the Carrier Board with a strip of tape and wraps around to cover the full length of the 11" long board. Cut a piece of the selected foil shade and lay over the toner print. Lay down the Mylar foil over the color foil & print, all the way down the board. When the Carrier Board is inserted, you just pull back on the Mylar to prevent any wrinkles from forming. (NOTE: A Carrier Board with Mylar film and tape is included in the "TRF Sampler Pack").

 

TRF SAMPLER PACK:

INCLUDES:

• Foil Pack: 20 foils, 8" wide by 36" long (480 sq.feet of foil)

• Carrier Board: 8-1/2"x11"

• .020" fiberglass board

• Mylar film (~ 10' long)

• Tape (to secure Mylar film to Carrier Board)

• Tack Rag

 

All foils are stapled to the chipboard to keep them organized in the order of the 'cover sheet' that indexes all 20 foils.

Unfold the foil pack and hang vertically to a wall for easy finding the foil you want.

 

TAPE:

We highly recommend using "3M Post-It" tape (available at our Store or any Office Supply store) for removing residual foil that sometimes stays behind on your work piece due to surface-tension. This tape has an extremely light adhesive to lift off residual foil without damaging delicate specialty papers.