Image transfer of laser printed page

I would like to share with you my experiences doing image transfers with toner printouts. I hope this is useful to other artists that want to use this technique on their artwork.

First attempts... Failure:

I needed to do some image transfers onto a couple of pieces of art I was working on. I tried following some instructions on youtube and encountered some problems. Sometimes the image would transfer, sometimes it would not. Or parts of the image would transfer but not others. I must have visited at least a dozen websites and I gave up when a couple of them started talking about needing a special paper that they did not make anymore or a special printer.One of them suggested going to Kinkos and getting photocopies on an old black and white photocopier.

My recipe for successful image transfers:

Well, I decided to conduct my own experiments and try to figure out how to do perfect image transfers reliably.

I purchased nail polish remover with acetone, acetone by itself, and lacquer thinner.

I printed pages on a HP laserjet 4100 and a Xerox Phaser 7500.

I tried image transfers over acrylic spray, gloss enamel, and resin.

I did about thirty transfers.

Toner image transfer of a manuscript

This is what I found:

Solvents: 

Nail polish remover, acetone and lacquer thinner work almost equally well. But acetone and lacquer thinner are cheaper at Home Depot. 

My recommendation: Acetone

Printers:

Both worked. However, an old laserjet might seem to work better because it prints in black which gives the most contrast when transferring the image, vs a colored print which is never as dark as pure black. Also, it seems older machines might work better because they probably don't fuse that well or they might just add more toner than needed. A bad fuser will deposit the toner on the page but not glue it to the page, so it makes for an easier and darker transfer. Similarly, too much toner will not fuse correctly and will make for better transfers.

How do we make the printer put more toner? Increase the contrast and darkness as much as you can while retaining the midtones you need. Keep in mind that the transfer will not be as dark as the printout.

Another trick I found works well is to run the same copy through the printer twice. This can be tricky because the paper does not always align perfectly. But 1 out of 3 should come out good. The second time the paper goes through the toner cannot stick as well to the paper because there's already toner there, and so that toner will end up on your transfer which is what we want.

As far as fusing, how can we trick the printer into fusing the toner badly, so the toner comes off easily into our transfer? The answer is to change the paper type setting to Transparency, but feed a regular paper through. On the transparency setting, the printer lowers the fuser termperature, so the toner will not stick that well to the paper. If your printer does not have this option then your other alternative is to run the copy twice, or use another printer.

My recommendation: Increase contrast and darkness and change the paper type to Transparency

Paper:

I tried two different papers (standard copy paper) and they worked fine. I also tried a glossy paper and it did not work at all.

My recommendation: Use standard everyday copy paper

Surfaces:

The cleaner, glossier and smoother the surface the better the transfer. I think it has to do with surface tension. When you lift the paper, the toner has two reasons to stick to the surface instead of staying on the paper: gravity and relative stickiness of each surface.

The process:

Some websites talk about having to rub thoroughly, or leave the paper there for a while.

I found out that the process takes only 10 seconds. The key is to use a large cotton ball and make sure you thoroughly and quickly wet the entire paper  You should be able to wet it in 5 seconds or less. You don't need to press too hard, and you don't need to use any hard objects to rub with. I used the same pressure as I use when pressing an elevator button or gently cleaning an object. Then do one more pass with the same cotton ball and immediately start lifting the paper slowly. The lifting should take 4 seconds max.  

If the paper dries before the 10 seconds is over then you did it too slow or you did not put enough solvent.

If the image is not dark enough then go back to the recommendations.

What is happening here and why does it work? The solvent goes through the paper and encounters the toner. The toner that is immediately against the paper is difficult for the solvent to take off because it's well fused. But the extra toner or any toner not well fused will just come off and deposit on the surface and complete the transfer. 

I found that rubbing tends to move the paper around even if you tape it because the wet paper expands and then wrinkles during the rubbing. So I found that rubbing the paper was not needed.

What's nice about this technique is that you can easily erase the surface and start over (as long as the surface does not have any other transfers on it of course.

Hopefully, this helps someone out there struggling with these image transfers.