By R.G. Sparber
It is hard to beat powder coating for a durable finish on metal plates. Here is a simple procedure that lets you embed text into a powder coated surface. What excited me about this method was that it uses commonly available materials and equipment.
You begin by printing text or artwork onto a plain piece of paper with a laser printer. Then, you fuse the text (toner) to the powder coated surface with a plastic laminator. After a short rest in the freezer to harden the toner, you soak the plate in water until the paper dissolves off.
I have been using aluminum flashing, which comes pre-powder coated, so I didn’t have to invest in a powder coating machine. If you want color in your artwork, you can either print in color or have color copies made at your local office supply store.
For a more complete description of this method, go to http://rick.sparber.org/LPPC.pdf.