Trying to paint in a hole

[avsh_noham]

Hi everyone.

Maybe you could help me find the right way to paint my prototype. It's a wall installation made of 5mm acrylic sheet ribs that has a grid of red squares painted on them. I mount them perpendicular to the wall.

The squares are painted inside a capsule shaped holes very close to the edge, and there are about a thousand of them so it has to be a fast and clean job.

I want to apply paint only on the internal face that is the closest to the edge front.

The paint i want to use is red enamel or red "Molotow" because i can use both without primer since i apply the paint on one side and expose it to the other.

I made some rapid painting tests and the result is not clean.

Any ideas of what may be the best way to execute it?

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[Gomer Pyle]

I'm not sure exactly what it is you want to achieve, but the way I understand it, it's the view in the second pic. that's the crucial one. If that's the case bear in mind that the curvature of the hole and the texture of the holes inner-wall is going to determine how the squares will appear, when viewed from the side.

In your examples the innner walls are relatively rough from the drill-bit cutting tiny grooves as it isn't perfectly centred (this would be very difficult to avoid), so you would need to either polish the holes (daunting task with 1000 holes) or maybe prepare them with a thick layer of clear varnish before applying colour (remember that the varnish-layer will visible around the edges of the coloured part when view from the side).

How do you plan to make the holes that you described in the drawing, will they be cut, punched or will they be part of a casting? Casting could maybe produce nice smooth inner walls.

/Daniel

 

[avsh_noham]

Gomer. You have well noticed that the holes surface is not prepared for a good painting result but this is a fast test in holes i drilled. Those holes will be laser cut in capsule shape so it wouldn't be a problem. What gives me a hard time is the painting method that has to cover only one wall in the hole (as shown in the sketch), with or without masking it has to leave the edges clean, and finally the paste has to be productive.

 

[Gomer Pyle]

What happens if you take a solvent-damp cloth and wipe of the spill around the edge of each hole. Or you might also be able to polish away the spill with a fine grade polishing compound.

/Daniel

 

[CDW]

Cover the plexy sheet (both sides) in some form of sticky back plastic (like some have on for protection) then laser cut the holes.

paint the hole interiors whilst the plastics on and then remove when dry, i suppose any surplus could be taken off with a polishing compound like Daniel said above.

Could possibly work ...... just an idea but i hope it helps.