Silk Screening: How to's?

[Ross Macintosh]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> She actually got a little defensive and basically told me how much she had invested in it and wasn't eager to impart any secrets <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I always find it funny (strange not ha-ha) when I meet people who won't share how they do things. I find the logic of keeping the "secrets" very peculiar. If she had been willing to help Ivca, then she might have ended up with a new friend - someone who could have helped her with fresh ideas and improved techniques.

I'm just glad the first people to discover how to create fire were willing to share their discoveries. I'm also glad all the xarans, xartists, xarainians are so willing to help one another so selflessly around here.

Oh and regarding silkscreening: I was recently in a professional screenprinting shop. It was oriented towards signs rather than t-shirts. I was amazed by what they could do. They had the registration problems licked and could do full colour printing at very large sizes. One of the projects I saw was they were back printing onto polycarbonate sheeting for installation on the front of Coke vending machines. The results looked as good as printing with a 300dpi inkjet printer - actually it looked much better because they could get much more saturated colours.

Regards, Ross

<a href=http://www.designstop.com/>DesignStop.Com</a>

[jjkohler]

Check out Amazon.com. A search for books and silk screen produced 35 hits. Some of them may be what you are looking for.

John

[qmr]

Interesting to see a request for info regarding silkscreening, as that is the reason I first bought a computer and bought coreldraw7 to design my stencils.

Several years later and I havent done a drop of silkscreening since, I'm now working 99.9% web-wise in a new exciting field of higher education delivery via the web, and they want cartoons and Flash and.. well lets just say theres life after squeegees...

But I want to get back into it. I am an artist and produced silkscreen prints to galleries as well as oil paintings. Its a disease and I'm getting withdrawal symptoms..

Silkscreen is, as has been stated, a 'block' printing methiod, where a hole of any size is made in a membrane (stencil) on the screen and ink is forced through with a squeegee. This membrane for me is mostly paper (as I like the hand-made, and misregistration effects it causes) the other main stencil is a photographic emulsion I squeegee in daylight onto the screen, dry in the dark, and expose photographic positives onto (previously lith films I made up in my darkroom, or even clear photocopies, two sandwiched together for opacity) This photo emulsion can be worked with when dry and sensitive to light, under a low power bulb, preferably a yellow one.

See some of my prints in the Gallery section of my website. You will see many fine, delicate tones etc. Not just hard edge and gradient tones. Screenprinting you teach yourself, and experiment. Its a great creative activity and of course there are always tshirts to sell, but to compete with the big guys you need to buy expensive equipment and work like a dog printing often incredibly boring things, forever. Which is why I never got into commercial tshirts.

I experimented widely with effects I could use that achieved other than the hard-edge style of screenprinting, using tissue paper under the screen etc <font size="1">(oop!! A secret!!! -who cares..)</font> and they work well for limited-edition art prints (up to 40).

Now I'll persevere with developing the stencils on the computer using freehand so I can send them as fh7 files to a colour laser A2 size in town to print them out as black/white on translucent film for cost approaching peanuts. The laser process delivers a solid film of 'ink' onto the substrate so the effect should be opaque. It'll work I'm sure. The freehand file format is necessary for me because this firm uses freehand7 and its a simple task to print vector file to their printer without the hasssle of creating a bitmap.

Fine effects are now possible in screenprinting on paper using the new generation water inks, that print the finest dots withouty 'drying-in' (the bane of screenprinters, usually).

Finally, Ulano make the best photostencil emulsion (and I've tried most of them) and their new dual-cure ultra fast product (cant remember its name) kicks ass. <font size="1">(excuse me I get enthusiastic easily)</font>

Lastly, get an exoposure lamp setup for photostencils. For a year I used the sun (ok here in New Zealand) but then I wired up a simple Metal Halide setup, 400w. Some of my photostencils are 800mm x 700mm in area and it works fine.

Q.
http://www.Qdesign.co.nz

[This message was edited by Quentin Roper on April 09, 2001 at 03:40 PM.]

[ivca]

Thanks to all that contributed to this thread, I am grateful.

Quentin, I forgot how enchanting your website was. Your oils and silkscreens are very nice, thank you for your input. I especially liked your trek through The Great Barrier Island ... wow some of those Photos look like the land of the lost, very breathtaking.

To Ross:
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR> then she might have ended up with a new friend - someone who could have helped her with fresh ideas and improved techniques. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I personally agree with what you said. But I "can" understand why some people do this. It's simply not in thier nature to share certain things. It is, however, in your nature [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img]

The bummer is though, this is a rural area, and she's got the only silkscreening outfit in a 20 mile radius (that I know of) [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_frown.gif[/img] Oh well, time to throw on the ascot and head over with a pile of roses.

I'm such a floozy [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_rolleyes.gif[/img]

Take care, Wayne

[qmr]

Ascot??

hmmm havent heard of that, my daughters bought me Lynx for my birthday last week, they insist it will do 'the trick'. But then, I've never been one for deodorants.. rushing with them out the door each morning here is like a scene from Das Boot <font size="1">(where the u-boat sailors are almost asphyxiated sitting on the bottom of the ocean)</font> My two beautiful girls douse themselves with exotically overpowering perfumes that can fell any mere mortal within closed quarters.... I guess its an early teen thing...

but I digress.

The best thing for you Wayne is to buy the Thames and Hudson manual of screenprinting. alternatively there is a great book or several by Professor Lynwood Skrynnik(?) from Texas Tech University (I met him when he came over here once) that deals with water based ink and screenprinting art prints. I shared some of my techniques with him. If you want to create art prints, remember that the thames and hudson book is THE manual and covers industrial concerns, but screenprinting can be as organic as you like nowadays (hand cut paper stencils, water based inks etc). The Professor's book would be a better deal for an artist.

I made all my own screens, lap jointing the corners and gluing the corners with epoxy-glue. Lay the screens down flat to set as you want them FLAT. But squareness doesnt matter too much. I built my house so I have all the tools, sawbench etc but you could get them made up at a joinery shop. Buy the cheapest polyester mesh (not silk), approx 90T (threads per centimetre) is great for finest stuff. 77T is mostly what I use as its not as inclined to dry-in, being more open mesh. Of course you can buy the screens made up. Four will get you started, about 28" x 24" I guess, and this number allows you to produce three colour screens and one precise detailed photostencil screen for the fine linear detail and/or registration colour (usually black). Make them even bigger, especially make them bigger than you think you need, as you need a couple of inches either side between frame and stencil, and a hands breadth either end to hold the surplus ink. I print A4 size prints with screens bigger than a square metre sometimes. I just use whatevers clean at the time.
Make a screenprint table out of flat board, tilted up away from you so when the screen is raised it is almost level, cover with cheap formica (easy to clean and remember you must not allow bumps or irregularities on the printing surface where the paper sits.) ..and drill little holes (3/16 size or 1/8) every 1-2 inches to cover the paper size you will use. You then create 1" 'walls' around this and nail a backing sheet to create your vacuum setup. Its a good idea to construct a baffle system (opposing parallel walls like a maze) inside the vacuum to channel the air to the air outtake hole, then glue a vacuum cleaner fitting to plug it into. A shut-off valve can be constructed from wood to shut off the air instantly. An extension bit of wood you can push/pull from the front makes it ergonomic. Buy the screen clamps ..like g-clamps with a hinge to attach your screens. Very quick. Avoid hinges and loose pins.. they are a pain in the - -

I make little fold-over lips approx 1/4" to hold the paper for tight registration, two along the long side of the paper and one at the bottom corner. This allows me to re-lay the paper when slight adjustments are necessary. Use a strip of paper to manipulste the paper around while you are peering through the mesh at the image underneath. Do this before you add ink and then print the whole edition 'blind'.

Squeegeeing is easy, usually you push lightly the ink across the screen away from you to 'charge' (ie: fill) the stencil, then with loud grunts worthy of Mel Gibson (Braveheart) you pull the squeegee with steady pressure so the rubber bends slightly but not enough pressure to flatten it, towards you across the screen. I tape an ordinary pencil to the front underneath of the screen to provide 'snap' because you only want the inky screen to contact the paper when the squeegee is overhead, not to sit on top of it as youll get very messy results and might just be compelled to hurl the squeegee out the window. (been there, done that..)

Each colour you want is a separate screen with new colour added (and new stencil, or you can tape paper etc to hide bits of stencil and reuse the screen - easy with oil inks but more problematic with water inks which are akin to acrylics) You then proceed to print the entire edition with each colour before applying the next colour.

Its a mesmerising process.. you can consider each colour stage before adding new ones and of course you can print anything you create in Xara, outputting it to paper and then photocopying it (twice, as mentioned above) or better still use my method above to get a transparent print from a colour laser. Remember to dissect your Xara designs and make each colour a separate black/white image for outputting to photostencil. layers are made for this..

Last thing, buy a cheap waterblaster to speed up the reclaiming of your screens.. this helps you avoid smelly solvents and the emulsions wash out in water. When the emulsion is 'set' you add an enzyme to break them down then wash them out of the screen.

Print onto rag paper for archival quality but for starting out, use thick cartridge paper.

I've lived for years in rural environments and all the prints on my website were done in those locations, often with pitiful water supplies, so I learned ways to keep screens reasonably clean, then took them all to a gas station in town and borrowed their waterblaster. You dont need to live near civilization to screenprint.

Q.
http://www.qdesign.co.nz

[ivca]

Hey, If Lynyrd Skynyrd could do it... [img]/infopop/emoticons/icon_wink.gif[/img] (kidding)

Thanks again Q

[qmr]

(always liked sweet home alabama.. my favourite working-on-my-car song..)

It's Professor Lynwood Kreneck. just remembered.

Q.

[Mike Bailey]

I have gotten pretty good results using laser printed transparency film as a positive for the photo emulsion process, I did some large prints where I used four or more transparency sheets for one screen, the edges of the film will block light and wash out, ya may have to touched up the screen with block out fluid. I made a simple exposure table using photo flood lamps. Screen frames are easy to make from wood.

A pretty good book to start with is The Complete Guide to Screen Printing, by Brad Faine, published by North Light Books, ISBN 0-89134-307-5

[This message was edited by Mike Bailey on April 11, 2001 at 11:07 AM.]

[qmr]

Mike thats interesting you got good results from laser trans prints, as I tried them a while ago and for me the black image areas were too light for the photostencil, although the newer Ulano dual-cure emulsions are so fast that a mere wisp of ultraviolet is enough it seems to expose the image (alright I exaggerate) ..but I get 1-2 minute exposure times at 1 metre distance from screen surface to bulb. Sunlight would be 15-30 secs.. I guess you can crank up the black output on the laser to suit?

Problem is that if the exposure takes a longer time, the edges of the positive become blurred due to light spread. The key to good photostencils is extra-sensitive emulsion, reasonably opaque film positives, and pure UV light ..sunlight, metal halide, mercury vapour (at a pinch).

One thing I should add, you can print anything you design in Xara using photostencils, but remember that the screen is made of tiny holes, so you need to render fine gradients in your artwork into little dots of varying size, rather than outputting each colour to photostencil as-is. Photoshop's halftone or better still mezzotint filters etc can do this. But I design my photostencils with strokes, dots etc as I work. Easy with a computer, hell with a Rotring Tech pen.. found those little tube-tech pens make good (tho expensive) darts..

Noting that Wayne lives out in the sticks, and not near a firm with a grunty colour laser reday to print his vector or bitmap files, perhaps the best method is to print out each stencil as b/w on paper and photocopy double sheets and sandwich them together to up their opacity, then collage them all to fit the image with sellotape. Second hand photocopiers are dirt cheap. Of course you could try the same with transparencies from a laser printer if you have one, but I discovered that photocopiers seem to intensify the black toner around the edges of the images, and for photostencil making that is beneficial.

<font size="1">"ahem . ."

"yes?"

"GET BACK TO WORK!!"</font>

Q

http://www.Qdesign.co.nz

[Mike Bailey]

Hi Q,
When I went shopping for my laser printer making photo stencils was what I had in mind, I settled on a HP4p, the toner is very opaque, I use a dark setting, I flip the image upside down then print the stencil, the printed side must be against the emulsion, if not light will leak under the toner due to the thickness of the film and cause fuzzy edges.

Here is a little trick for registering multi color prints, tape down a piece of transparent film so it will flip out of the way under 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. screens, and make a print on each, flip it out of the way, to register just flip the transparency over the paper or what ever you are printing on and you can line it up exactly where it should be

[This message was edited by Mike Bailey on April 12, 2001 at 07:26 AM.]