Awesome!
Workflow:
- scanned my Airborne map at 300dpi this morning
- lightened it a bit in Photoshop (I don't care for the gothic midnight palette)
- sliced it into 4 pieces
- arranged it across four A4 sheets using Illustrator at 130% size
- saved to PDF
- printed one sheet at a time in the laserjet printer
- cut-away borders with scissors
- slapped up onto the backside of my office whiteboard
- felt like a super cool dude!
The printing was a bit touch-and-go at first. I removed all the paper from the tray and placed one magnetic paper sheet inside, then reloaded the tray. When I sent the single page print job the HP first sat there for a good 3 minutes (no exaggeration) trying to decide if it had paper or not before finally believing me and then sliding the magnetic paper through without complaint.
In reality this stuff prints very easily, but the printer does need a little coaxing to "feel" it. You can't lay multiple sheets in because they do adhere to each other. It has to be one by one.
They adhere nicely to sheet metal - both the whiteboard backside and my filing cabinets. They also adhere to each other so you could conceivably print out a terrain modification piece like turning a field to forest or adding a beach+ocean and slap that neatly into place atop your original map.
The map slices are curling a tiny bit at the edges after having been run through the printer, but I'm optimistic some time spent between heavy books will cure that. This only appears to be present when they are not attached to something metallic, such as right now as they rest on my desk.
Sometime today I will order materials to make counters. I could always just use more sheets of this 0.3mm magnetic paper to make single-sided counters, but I'm afraid the thinness will make them too hard to lift, which will result in pinching, which will damage the counters long term.
I'm going to order some 0.5mm and 1mm thick magnetic sheets with adhesive and print countersheets on regular paper to lay atop and then slice. We'll see how that goes.
All in all, though, so far so good. Step 1 - magnetic maps - was a resounding success! I'm pretty pumped!
The following photos depict:
- original sheets post-printing and waiting to be cut
- fully assembled on the back of my whiteboard
- close-up of the layout showing that these are, indeed, magnetic
