Screenprinting

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I would love to join the workshop, if you’d needed a help with making drawers or exploring darkroom options, I’m happy to try to imagine the back left of the snug and sorting out adjacent tasks like re-organizing the storage of stuff that is there currently.

What could also be good as prep work is getting a printer set up to make transparencies so we can expose some screens with them.

I dimly recall seeing a roll of translucent film on the giant printer but I have no idea if/how/when it works.

For the screens the critical thing is even application and making sure it dries but doesn’t harden ahead of time.

I think there’s a pressure washer in the booth too, that makes cleaning screens so much easier!

I think it was sold the big printer. But there’s a vinyl cutter.

Yes, we presumably have most if not all the stuff you need! Just need someone to actually use it! Go for it and share with the rest of us! :slight_smile:

Ah no! Do any of the other larger printers work? At a pinch you can actually use copier paper and laser printers but then we’re restricted to A4 image sizes.

I think the office laser is the only printer in the space now.

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Yes, the other printers didn’t actually work!

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Well that makes it less complicated I guess. I will look into what transparencies work with laser printers as I’m pretty sure I destroyed an entire printer once using the wrong type…

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Yes please get the right ones! :+1:

Did we manage to get any non-expired screen emulsion?

Haven’t tried to! We only messed about with an existing screen, no one has exposed one in years…

Ok. I guess I’ll come in and do the rounds and see what we need, what we can build and what we have already.

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Okay so the state of things as far as I can tell is this:

We have plenty of screens and countless bottles of screen cleaner about the place. A lot of screens need re-meshing however.

I can’t find any screen emulsion anywhere and the inks we have look pretty dry. We have a few acrylic pigment colours though not many and I’m willing to bet half are dead anyway. I threw a few out that were kaput.

There are two buckets of print binder, one belonging to @StudioNelle but dating from ~2016.

There are a few squeegees under the sink which is in dire need of a clean up, not sure what can be thrown out.

The screen printing drawers are basically a mess and need going through. Doesn’t look like any work in there has been used for years.

Seems like at the very least we need to order some supplies, if anyone else has any more info to add or wants to come and help me sort stuff out that would be great. I’ll be around on Thursday afternoon.

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@JackL

I’ll see how is work on Thursday, but keen on joining and helping out!

Aha, just went into the snug and found some more inks but I think they’re for textiles? Not sure if they’re water soluble and might make cleanup a pain.

The plastisol ink is not water soluble.

Sounds like we need us some new inks then.

@LisaP had a look at the screen printing area as well a few months ago and made a list of things we needed.

  • 2 squeegees 13’‘
  • Masking tape
  • Packing tape
  • mesh 90Ty
  • Photo emulsion

Paper:

  • Cannelletto Blanco - printing paper
  • Newsprint
  • Tissue paper
  • Tracing paper

Inks:

  • textile and paper

We have some mesh in a drawer that might be useful for a screen. There were also a few more squeegees about the place and a strip of rubber for making our own.

Emulsion and a coater is pretty vital however, as is some transparencies we can feed through the laser printer to make masks.

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