Preliminary report on screenprinting......

[Chris Crosskey]

Hi People,
Well, I've just spent a couple of days messing around at the local 
craft-printing co-operative learning the fundemaentals of 
screen-printing wrt panel legending. First signs are that it will work 
fairly well. The print used is a mixture of some special goo that they 
use plus an acrylic paint of your choice for colour. This appears to 
bind quite happily to the fine-texture black powder-coat, and although 
it is water soluble before it dries and for a while afterwards, 
apparently it becomes fairly permanent after a couple of days or 
so....
	The big poroblem is going to be lining things up accurately. I 
can get very exact artwork out of a Deskjet printer, even though I 
have to run the acetate through several times to get a really good 
artwork. The problem I was having was in lining up the print on the 
panel. I've got a solution involving accurately measuring things, 
though it is far from ideal, and it's entirely possible I'll make a 
jig and my own printing unit (in fact I'm certain I'll do this) which 
will hold a 9x3 panel exactly in place and indicate on the screen 
where the artwork needs to go. As long as it is made with sensibly 
fine tolerances I think a registration error of less than .2mm should 
be achievable.
It was a bit bizarre in the printing place as all the normal users are 
artist types, and had some real problems understanding what I was 
doing, and quite why I was so bothered about the placement accuracy, I 
guess it isn't a problem if you're doing it onto a piece of paper that 
you will trim before framing and selling or whatever....They 
appreciated the fact that I fixed one of the dark-room lights and have 
promised to have a look at the other one this weekend though, honestly 
they haven't got the first idea about electrical stuff, it's almost 
frightening <g>....I guess I'm going to be seeing a lot of broken 
electrical goods in the next couple of weeks though, I've told them I 
don't do kettles, hairdryers and electric fires, on the basis that 
there's too much current there for me to feel happy.....oh well....
	Once I get the hang of it though it'll be pretty good, I 
reckon I can do three screens a week (or five if I take Tuesdays off), 
and they are going to cost about 6 UKP for basically as many panels as 
I can run, in any size too, so I should be able to do anything you 
send me the artwork for, but I need to worry about ink usage, you 
don't put a lot on, but you waste a lot and it doesn't keep too well. 
If I get my own screen then the price drops as I no longer need to 
rent one for the day. Unfortunately the chemicals seem to only be 
available in large tubs, I'll have to see if I can get it in smaller 
quantities or else buy it from the co-op, that will allow me to do it 
at home easily, as the stuff is not as unpleasant as the developer I 
use, let alone the etchant.

chrisc