Ribbons?

[spilperson]

I am a very inexperienced caster.

I have been doing some research and reading lately about how to include ribbons in casting resin blanks. All I have been able to find so far is the method of casting a sheet of resin on glass, then cutting that into ribbons and sort of randomly arranging those in the molds before you pour a brick of blanks that you cut into blanks after it cures.

While I appreciate that method, it does not seem like that could be the method used by "commercial" blank manufacturers. When I look at their blanks that include "ribbons", I see that in multi-colored blanks, the ribbons totally separate the colors, and that the ribbons go continuously from one side of the blank to the other. It looks to me as if the "ribbons" in fact start out as sheets. They look like ribbons after the blanks are cut.

Does anyone really know how they do this? Also,does anyone know what type of material they use and where to get it?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Kendallqn]

Some of it is sheets of vinyl used in solvent printing. Perforated is used as well. It is made of different types of plastic and I'm not sure which ones they use but I use a lot of it in the sign business and it looks to me like that is what it is.

 

[Displaced Canadian]

I know that if you make the ribbons out of epoxy and use PR for the casting the PR won't cure where it touches the epoxy. A co worker mentioned that you have to add something to make it stick. I made 2 more with PR ribbons but they were given away before I could turn them to see how they lasted. I was thinking next time to use epoxy for the ribbons and the casting and see how that worked. The article I read said to let the ribbons sit overnight before casting. I won't do that next time because I'm thinking if the ribbons are still a little sticky the blank may hold together better.

 

[ed4copies]

In the acrylic "industry", they refer to those swirls as "paper".

Don't know if this is really what it is, or industry jargon.

Hope it helps,
Ed

 

[spilperson]

Thanks for the replies so far gents. I will keep looking, might look for some vinyl sheets...