Re: polymer plate drying time
Susan When I put the plate into the drying cabinet on high temp, the cabinet's cold to start with, so I guess the temp over a 10-15min period will never get to the maximum that Toyoba mention. I'll have to check it out. Keith. On Mar 16, 2007, at 7:11 AM, SusanV wrote: Keith and Jon, After all this talk about drying time and such, this morning I exposed and developed a test strip then skipped the hairdryer stage and went straight to the oven set at 100 degrees. I figured a few minutes at 100 to dry it, then bump the temp up for a few more minutes as per Keith's Toyobo instructions. Well........... after 10 minutes I checked it, and it had bubbled and kind of melted in all the darkest areas! There are also larger (pencil diameter), flat bubbles in the mid to light tones that appear to be the polymer detaching from the plate base. The plate didn't get that warm... when I took it out of the oven it was just a little warm in my hand, not hot at all. SO.... it appears that the moisture in the polymer needs to escape more slowly than the 100 degree oven allowed. Also I would speculate that since those deep bubbles occurred, separating the polymer from the base, there was moisture down at that level that became trapped when the top layer dried more quickly. So as usual, haste makes waste :o) we need to be sure they have sufficient drying time before any heat curing, and I'd suggest testing the heat thing before trying it on something important. I'm going to go re-do this now and I'll report back. Susan
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