Marking for 3D designs?

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JojoBuller

Member
Joined
Nov 27, 2016
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Australia
Hey everyone, long time no talk.

I have a question about marking the acrylic to do 3d inlay designs.

I am going to put a hypothetical here, to help you understand what I am going to ask.

I have a client that wants a certain shape worked into the smile line in acrylic. (think window smile lines) Say they want a heart in the smile line vs a circular window. I have put the thin base layer of acrylic to prevent having to file coloured acrylic/ glitter.

I want to "sketch" the heart onto the base layer acrylic, without causing problems with adhesion and chemical makeup of the acrylic. I was thinking of lightly drawing with graphite pencil, but I am unsure if having this fine layer of graphite pencil encapuslated in the acrylic will cause problems.

I look forward to your replies and opinions.

Regards, Jojo
 
You won't have any problems. Acrylic can encapsulate anything, I doubt a little graphite will be any different. I've done it as well when I wanted to have some guide lines. Never had a problem
 
So hypothetically, you can inlay all sorts of things into acrylic, so I don't see why a light sketch in graphite would be a problem , however, will the graphite disolve into your acrylic? (So say you draw the heart line then go up to it in clear,so do you risk having murk pencil lines in your clear) the other thing is, does graphite have an adverse chemical reaction with the monomer? I'd be tempted to do an experiment on a swatch stick, (but just practice a really simple version of what your trying to do with the base layer, the pencil, drawin, then the clear window, then the encapsulatation and just make sure nothing sinister appears.
 
It won't react with the monomer. However, I did my designs with coloured acrylic so I can't tell if it will appear through your clear. Probably yes if you make it too visible. So perhaps try to make a very fine, thin pencil line. Besides, isn't the line going to be for your cut out (your window)? And isn't that window going to be filled with something later? Won't that something cover it? Unless it's aquarium nails you are going to do. Your best bet would be to try on a few pop sticks. And post some pics
 
Thanks everyone. The lines would be covered in opaque coloured acrylic so there shouldnt be any colour bleed issues.

I figured it would be OK, I have encapsulated swarovski's in the past to create a "crystal cavern" type nail, but I wanted to be sure that graphite wouldn't react with the acrylic. I always feel better safe than sorry. I would hate to wear (or my clients for that matter) a nail that was structually unsound due to something I had encapsulated.

Thanks again .
 

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