OpenForge 2.0 Mosaic Floors

thingiverse

This autumn I went to the New York World's Maker Faire where I stopped at a booth that showcased how to transfer printed images onto rocks and wood. This sparked an idea that I finally got to try out this week: Toner Transfer of images to 3d prints. As far as I can find, no one else has stumbled upon this technique for adding graphics to 3d prints and made it really work. This technique means that anyone, with little or no painting skill, can transfer brilliant images onto flat surfaces on 3d prints! My first experiment with this was to make mosaic tiles for OpenForge, the results of which you can see above. This technique requires some patience, as it takes a few attempts to get it right. To start, print an image from the mosaic.zip file using a laser printer. It's critical that the printing be done on a laser printer, as inkjet toner soaks into the paper, whereas laser toner is baked onto the surface of the paper. Cut out the image and apply a gel medium to it, spreading it well over all areas you want to transfer. Glue the image down, making sure there is good contact for the image everywhere. Let the medium harden for at least an hour or overnight. When the medium is dry, take some water and spritz it on the back of the tile. You will start to see the image through the wet paper. Take your thumb and lightly rub, and then let dry. After drying, you may notice that the image becomes somewhat foggy due to remaining paper fibers. Apply more water and lightly rub in circles until you get all the paper fibers off as much as possible. Then, protect the image by applying a layer of medium on top. This will both help to brighten the image and protect it from gameplay. Keep in mind that this process can be tricky, and it may take a few attempts to get it right. But don't worry if you rub off some of the image – just paint the area with dark grey paint and line the edges with white or light grey to make the image look like the mosaic was damaged. You can see in the upper left quadrant that I did this, and now the tile looks like an ancient mosaic!