Thermal Printers?

[Infamous]

So I’ve been trying to figure out how to skip the tracing bit in the stencil process. Somebody on here mentioned thermal printers a while back. After doing some digging I found out that all the main brands of inkjet printers use thermal. So what I’m wondering is how exactly does that work? Can I simply scan my drawing, invert the image, then print on regular spirit master paper? Does it work on any carbon paper?

If anyone does it this way let me know how it works, so far I’ve been drawing my stuff holding against a window tracing it on the reverse side, then tracing the reverse of my drawing onto the stencil paper. I’d like to remove all the hassle if its possible

edit: I should mention that I have an inkjet printer already just need to get some ink for it as its been sitting for a while and the ink has dried up.

[Ramenuzumaki]

Im not 100% sure about printers, however, you can print it inverted and use an office fax machine. that’s what I use

[Infamous]

What kind of system is that fax? inkjet, thermal, laserjet? It may work the same way..

edit: Doesn’t matter, I’m just going to get some ink for this printer and see if it works. I’ll keep you posted

[Ramenuzumaki]

its Thermal
it HAS to be thermal. i dont think inkjet works
its the heat that transfers the carbon not the pressure of printing
you need a thermal printer for thermal fax paper
and a dot matrix printer for hectograph

[Spider]

You can also use a dot matrix printer with no ink. Some of these can be found for a relatively cheap price. But I doubt an inkjet would work, never really gave it a go, I just saved up and eventually bought a small thermal unit, about 140 us dollars.

[Infamous]

From my understanding, most the main brands of printers use Thermal Inkjet, including mine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inkjet_printing#Drop-on-demand

I still don’t know if it will work though. But its worth a try

[Ramenuzumaki]

try it out
if you’re printing directly on the sheet make sure you have enough stencil paper for hte size of hte design, and print it on the side of a piece of printer paper that is going otbe priunted on. remove the back yellow sheet, and remove the onion protective sheet. you now have only carbon, and stencil. tape all four sides with masking tape to the paper with the carbon UP so it prints on the carbon. then print your flipped design directly over the carbon. since you’re printing on the carbon which is backwards, your stencil will be forwards :3

Lemme know how it works

[Infamous]

Will do, I think I’m gonna go ahead and get some ink later today and try it out asap

[Infamous]

I was able to get a decent stencil from doing this.. It’s kinda blobby but I am going to blame the image I used, It had gray areas which made the transfer lack definition

[Ramenuzumaki]

using just a regular ink jet?

how did you do it?

[Infamous]

I did it just the way you said. Except it wouldn’t transfer the carbon to the sheet. But since I printed on the shiny side of the carbon sheet I was able to apply it directly to my chest. The carbon didn’t transfer, the printer ink did. Kind of like if you’ve ever stuck some scotch tape to something and it pulled the pencil markings off.

Whats cool about that though, is that I can do it in multiple colors, not just carbon blue. I may have stumbled onto a whole new method.. I’m going to see if it works with parchment paper taped to a regular sheet of printer paper.

I’m sure you’ll have to move quickly though as the ink will dry

[Author]

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