Help Needed -dying PETG

[Mitcheg1]

I am desperate for help. I've been struggling late with dying my PETG visors using idye poly. I end up with a gritty appearance and large black smudged areas. I've used this process before with mixed results and can't figure out how to resolve this problem!!! HELP!!!

I use a large stainless steel pot to boil my water and mix my dye. I then put that into a plastic container and wait for it to cool down to ~145F. Then I dip my visor and let it sit for 8 min the. Into cold water, rinse and repeat! I am desperate for help!!!

 

[Faraam]

This isnt a whole lot of help but there is a post around here about a person making the Visor for a Samus helmet. She showed what type of transparent colored paint she used and the mirror spray she used. I hope this helps or at least gets you looking in the right direction maybe.

 

[nathancarter]

Rit recently released a dye for synthetics, but if the iDye doesn't do it, I doubt the Rit poly dye would work either.

I'd probably pursue the spray-on tint as described above. if you're just going for gray, there's taillight spray in the automotive section of walmart or at the auto parts store. It's kinda expensive though, like $12-15 for a can.

 

[mdb]

That looks like the colour enhancer wasn't fully dispersed- did you add it after the water had cooled or before?

How many packs are you using? I used about 8 packs for my Elsa gown (it's 100% covered in sequins which is a plastic too- not sure if mine are PET or not) and in dyeing my additional sequins I definitely found I needed to adjust the dye concentration.

But if it is gritty (sounds like the dye is not fully dissolved too) and you are getting those smeary spots (definitely spots of high concetration of colour enhancer) I'd start by boiling a small amount of water, add the dye capsule to that and set it aside while the larger post gets hot. Then add the dye to the larger pot once it gets really hot, stir the water constantly, once the water is super hot add the colour enhancer- it has a much more limited working time (it's so pungent because it's volatile) but if you add it once it starts cooling you are going to get little globs like that.

I love the stuff, I was able to custom dye every fabric on my elsa gown with it

 

[Mitcheg1]

I use 4 packets that I placed in approximately 10-12 quarts of boiling water. I add the enhancer immediately after. I boil and stir until I see not more powder. I then pour that in a 15 gallon pot and add another 15+ quarts of boiling water. Stir regularly and let sit for an hour to cool to 130-135F.