Marble and wood are attractive building materials, but they can be spoilt by graffiti. Digital Dimensional Stone of South Carolina has been granted a patent (US 6686315) on a way of producing easily cleaned replicas.
DDS photographs the surface of, say, a grainy wood and transfers it onto polyester film. The printing ink is a powder that sublimates when heated, and bonds only loosely with the film. The building material can be just a cheap cement block coated with polyester resin. The film is pressed down on the resin at high temperature, and the ink pattern sublimates into the resin…
