Ok, it's starting to feel like every tutorial that I watch/read/whatever is a bunch of camera trickery.

I cannot for the life of me get toner to stick to a coke can scrap that I've cut and flattened, and cleaned both sides to shiny with heat and acetone.

Here's what I've tried so far:

print to shelf paper, placed on glass stovetop between two layers of foil on both sides. stovetop set to 3, iron set to mid-way. 4 minutes of an unbelievable amount of pressure; almost cracked my iron.

baked in an oven between four preheated old cast iron pans at 300F

straight acetone with laser printed glossy paper

acetone/alchol mix with glossy paper, both with finger-only pressure and also clamped with the force of God, one attempt I dried for 30 minutes, another when the smell of acetone/alchol had gone.

metal clamp preheated with a heat gun to 240F, using vinyl shelf paper.

The last method with the heat gun is the only one that even partially worked. For testing, I was using straight black toner from the excess edges of my print jobs. Some of the toner transferred but definitely not reliably or repeatedly.

Every other method either transferred Zero Toner or a few flecks of black here and there, but mostly Nothing At All.

and just now I preheated the old cast iron pans, turned my stovetop burner to 5 of 10, and ironed with the pan on the hot burner with moderate pressure. This looked like I had done absolutely nothing at all to the aluminum.

I've tried both sides of the aluminum can for all attempts above. I've cleaned with alcohol and acetone, and with and without a scotch-brite pad. With the scotch-brite I've scuffed the metal and also been very gentle so as to not mar the surfaces.

Is this really that difficult? I've been gentle, I've been rough, I've been gradual and sudden both, I've tried completely drying and/or cooling my tests, and also while still warm and/or wet, and everything in between.

What gives here? Can anyone help shed some light on this for me?