Re: photocopier toner and ceramic imaging
George Mackie (mackie@uvic.ca)
Wed, 12 Nov 1997 18:08:13 -0800 (PST)
Richard - thanks very much for your reply to my question about toner. This
topic may seem inappropriate for this list but it has interesting
implications for photoceramics and if others are interested I would be
glad to discuss with them off-list, as I believe would Dennis Southwood
who also replied. The technique is to turn off the copier after it has
made the image on the paper but before the paper has gone through the
heater to fuse the toner in place. You then open up the machine reach in
and grab the paper (wear a dark shirt while executing this manoeuvre)
turn the image face down onto a slab of clay and rub- the toner comes off
on the clay. I have tried it and it works. The image survives firing to
cone 08 ( 945 C) and comes out looking like red iron oxide ( ochre) and no
longer smears to the touch so you can glaze over it with a transparent
glaze. Trouble is, its hard to get a strong image- tends to be
wishy-washy, though the definition is very precise, more so than with
dichromated colloid images in my experience. I got this out of Paul
Scott's book Ceramics and Print, but Dennis told me Les Lawrence was doing
it too and there may be others out there in cyberspace. What we need is a
way of intensifying the image or getting more of the toner to leave the
paper and go on to the clay and if oxides or salts of cobalt, copper,
manganese etc could be incorporated in the toner, then of course the way
would be open to colour-photocopier-ceramics. Its so diabolically simple
in principle that I would like to make it work even if its a betrayal of
all that alt-photo-process stands for - or is it ? George
On Tue, 11 Nov 1997, Richard Knoppow wrote:
>
>
> The Xerox type copier
> works by having a drum coated with a material that will hold a charge
> without letting it leak off laterally. The drum is charged by a brush with
> high-voltage on it. When exposed to light the charge is knocked off
> leaving an image of the dark areas of the original in the form of the
> remaining charge. This charge picks up the toner. The paper is then
> brought against the drum and the toner transferred to the paper with
> another charge. The paper then runs under a heater to fuse the toner to
> the paper. Much of the magic of the copier is in the details of the drum
> coating.
> ----
> Richard Knoppow
> Los Angeles,Ca.
> dickburk@ix.netcom.com
>