If you're looking to customize clear acrylic the best transfer paper for acrylic is probably not what you think.
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There's no UV Printer involved. There's not sublimation needed. Instead the trick is actually using a White Toner Printer with hard surface paper. Read on for my top 6 reasons why iColor Hard Surface Paper is the best for printing on clear acrylic!
1. Ability to Over and Underprint
The iColor 560 White Toner Printer (and the larger 650 and 800w models) can both under and overprint. That means you can put print white either over or under the CMYK layer. The ability to underprint white means you can get bold vibrant color transfers even on clear acrylic because white acts as the base color giving the transfer a little opaqueness.
Here I was printing on a clear acrylic sheet to make custom acrylic keychains and earrings with my daughter's high school logo.
2. Print on Front or Back of Clear Acrylic
Using the iColor Hard Surface paper also gives you flexibility because you can place the transfers on the front or the back of the acrylic.
For acrylic keychains, ornaments and earrings I like to print on the back of the acrylic to get a little bit of a 3D effect from the image showing through the acrylic.
3. Double Sided Prints on Clear Acrylic
The white layer is subtle enough though that even from the back you can still see the full colors making the printed acrylic sheets almost double sided.
4. Low Price and High Margins
The price per sheet of iColor Hard Surface paper is less than a dollar per sheet. I was able to get multiple sets of earrings, several keychains and a few ornaments out of the same 8.5 x 11" sheet.
Six transfers for ornaments also fit on a single sheet of Hard Surface paper so the margins for selling are high!
5. Fast and Easy 1 Step Transfer Paper
iColor Hard Surface paper is also one step so there's no need to marry two sheets together. Simply print on the iColor 560 White Toner Transfer Printer and press using a heat press to apply the transfer to the acrylic then peel off the transfer sheet leaving the image on the back of the acrylic.
6. No Cut, No Weed Transfers!
There's no cutting or weeding white toner transfers so the process is super fast. After you press the transfer onto the acrylic you're ready to laser cut. Check out this video to see how quickly I was able to make these scatter pattern acrylic earrings.
If you don't have a laser cutter you can also apply the iColor Hard Surface transfers to pre-cut acrylic blanks.
If you are going to laser cut your own acrylic sheets, my preference is to press the hard surface transfer to the back of clear acrylic first then laser cut with my xTool P2 laser cutter, but you can cut first then apply the transfer.
Just keep in mind acrylic becomes pliable when heated so you use this trick to avoid the acrylic warping or curling causing your transfers to crack or wrinkle.
Here's a quick video on the full start to finish process for how to print on clear acrylic!
Want to learn more? Check out these iColor 560 White Toner Printer tutorials
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