Preliminary report on screenprinting......

[David Halliday (Volt Computer)]

Couple of tips - mount the screen with hinges on a sheet of plywood (
this is probably what they are doing already ).  Then use masking tape
to fasten a sheet of cardboard approximately where the image is. This
keeps ink off of your plywood and is cheap and can be replaced when
dirty. 

Make the jigs out of pieces of sheet Formica or thin plastic.  Use a
"hinge" of masking tape along one edge ( blue masking tape works best )
and get everything positioned as close as possible.  When a few trial
runs shows that it is positioned correctly, lift the jig up at the
hinge, lay down a few inches of double-stick cloth carpet tape and go
for it.  

If you use a large screen, you can put several images on the screen and
use masking tape and butcher paper to mask out the ones you don't want
to use.  You could probably do six or eight module faces per screen.

The downside to using a large screen is that they do stretch a bit - go
easy with the squeegee ( I would love to know where that word came
from... )


For doing artwork, one way to go is to render the art twice life size
and use a "stat" or "process" camera to shoot the image onto litho film.
This will give absolute solid black and clear images nice and sharp
since your dots per inch will be doubled.  Start with as sharp an image
as possible - it does make a difference.


Best of luck!!!


> -----Original Message-----
> From:	chrisc at zetnet.co.uk [SMTP:chrisc at zetnet.co.uk]
> Sent:	Wednesday, July 23, 1997 2:23 PM
> To:	synth-diy at horus.sara.nl
> Subject:	Preliminary report on screenprinting......
> 
> 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....
>