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Transfer paper pattern to sheet aluminum

ColinB

Active Member
I have a 24x18" pattern (almost entirely curved lines) drawn on thick (110lb) paper. What is a good way to transfer it to a sheet of aluminum, then a mirror image to another sheet of aluminum. I need to be able to follow some of the transferred pattern with a bandsaw and some with a bead roller.
 
Unless its super complicated or detailed, could you just tack it in place & use a Sharpie? then remove & flip & that should be your Side-B on other stock?
For more accurate stuff I use 3M spray but that's from CAD drawings & the paper is considered consumable. Remove it when done with Acetone.
 
I have a 24x18" pattern (almost entirely curved lines) drawn on thick (110lb) paper. What is a good way to transfer it to a sheet of aluminum, then a mirror image to another sheet of aluminum. I need to be able to follow some of the transferred pattern with a bandsaw and some with a bead roller.

My wife is a seamstress. She uses a tracing wheel on a pen that rolls along a pattern and leaves marks on whatever she is copying the pattern to. I think she uses carbon paper. The wheels can be had serrated or smooth. Hers are all serrated. The points penetrate the pattern better. Hers are much better than this, but here is the idea.

 
Use the double-sided tape that's designed for posters (lower tack)

Screenshot 2025-03-06 at 10.07.19 AM.png


then peel off and repeat for the mirror image. Or, use a glue stick: they hold well but can be peeled off of metal easily.
 
My wife is a seamstress. She uses a tracing wheel on a pen that rolls along a pattern and leaves marks on whatever she is copying the pattern to. I think she uses carbon paper. The wheels can be had serrated or smooth. Hers are all serrated. The points penetrate the pattern better. Hers are much better than this, but here is the idea.

I'd got to the carbon paper (picked some up) or transfer paper (probably what your wife uses), but not to a good way to apply pressure. I just rummaged through the sewing supplies and found one of the serrated wheel transfer tools. I think it will work.
 
Photo copy your pattern and glue the photo copied version on your sheet with spray adhesive, no tracing required, just cut them both together
 
Unless its super complicated or detailed, could you just tack it in place & use a Sharpie? then remove & flip & that should be your Side-B on other stock?
For more accurate stuff I use 3M spray but that's from CAD drawings & the paper is considered consumable. Remove it when done with Acetone.
Unfortunately, it's much more than just the perimeter. There are lines for the finished perimeter, there is an rough initial perimeter line that is 1" larger to resist bead roller warping, there is a line for the bead roller to follow, lines for decorative cutout shapes and some screw hole locating. I have carbon paper and a seamstress pattern transfer roller, which I will try later today.
 
I've had to do equivalent things to that with composite material layups into molds. Various materials needed to be orientated or laminated in a certain way & many had had perimeter offsets or allowance notches. Its kind of like a sewing pattern. In the end I had dedicated patterns. Some had index marks like pin holes or whatever to align them if that was required. Cardboard is thick enough to trace around but its getting harder to find & spendy. For my purposes it also didn't bend well into molds. Sometimes you want something flatt-ish & sometimes it needs to conform. I ended up stumbling on a roll of ?cant even remember? but it like a thick vinyl on a roll. Maybe intended for picnic tables or something like that. Like a Walmart of Crappy Tire item. It laid reasonably flat over a 2D surface. You might still have to tack it here & there along the edge to get your felt pen mark, but I've seen similar work for custom sheet metal.

Where things gets weird is transferring a shape from a 3D part to something that can be (somewhat) replicated in 2D. There I've seen trim tape used on periphery outline, then a criss-cross web of tape to hold it together. Then you carefully extract that off the surface & lay it on template material. You can only make it so big before its a distorted mess.
 
Unfortunately, it's much more than just the perimeter. There are lines for the finished perimeter, there is an rough initial perimeter line that is 1" larger to resist bead roller warping, there is a line for the bead roller to follow, lines for decorative cutout shapes and some screw hole locating. I have carbon paper and a seamstress pattern transfer roller, which I will try later today.
Carbon paper and the seamstress roller are working great.
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Looks good. You have enough of a pin roller outline you could even augment with Sharpie marker. I forgot there might be possibility of the protection layer plastic, so I guess it all depends on what kind bending & cutting operations is going to occur. Back in the days of laser printers (well some guys still have theirs) a common method was to put the printed paper ink side down & go over it with an iron. The line would melt onto material & you had a decent line to work with.
 
I just spray glue (hate that stuff) the print onto the plate and use that to figure out how to position the work onto the mill. Then run the CNC once I've set the 0,0 position.
 
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