Hi,

I've been reading up on how to airbrush lately in preparation for a project I'm going to be doing. Specifically, I've been researching how to get a carbon fiber effect using different colors of paint and one of those perforated drawer liners. This effect is apparently easy to get on a flat surface, but near impossible to get on a curved surface because the drawer liners lose their uniformity when bent. Unfortunately, my project will require me to apply this to curved surfaces.

Here's the synopsis of what my project is: I'm going to be working with a plastic called Sintra. The plastic comes in flat sheets, but when you heat it up with a heat gun or hot water, it becomes flexible. When it's still flat, it would be easy to paint with the carbon fiber effect, but would be near impossible to paint after the curves are put in.

That said, here's the question: If I painted the effect onto the plastic, then heated it up and bent it, would it crack the paint?

Thanks for any help.

That won't work.

I didn't think so. Oh well, I'll have to figure something else out.

Okay, I'm out of ideas. I'm trying to paint a domed helmet to look like carbon fiber using the described process. Basically, I need a grid-like material with square holes of similar size and spacing to the holes in cabinet liner to get a carbon fiber effect. However, it needs to be able to conform to the shape of the helmet. If it stretches some, that is fine, but it has to look like one continuous piece, so it must not bunch up in places (by "bunch up," I mean like what a towel does if you try to make it conform to a ball. It folds up in places instead of lying flat across the surface of the ball.) I think that makes sense. Any ideas on what type of stretchable grid material I could use? Thanks.

The easiest way I can think of, is to get your hands on some PVC mesh, perhaps buy a plastic sive and modify if you can't get it in sheets, heat form it to a close fit, and then just spray paint that sucker.
We've got a couple of rolls of plastic mesh at work, that can be heat formed, but I can't remember wtf it's called at the moment...

At least that's how I'd do it if I got an order for something like what you're building (I work with special effects).

Normally I wouldn't help someone who wanted to do carbon-look, because I think that shit is retarded, but what you are looking for is flyscreen mesh. You can remove strands if you want to open the weave up a bit.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3052/2569566313_373808b312.jpg?v=0

an alternative is to cut the drawer stuff into hexagons and pentagons and arrange it like a soccer ball. Any other design of flat shapes that form a rough sphere could work.

RDP

That'd do the trick.