double split-fountain, interesting links

spores at duffysso – I printed a poster this weekend using my brand new 19″ squeegee. the poster is a double split-fountain experiement. the “successful” prints look rad, but even the “less successful” prints look great.

 

for some reason- after I printed the first 2 screens, and was about to lay down the black, I started having off-contact problems between the squeegee, screen, and press. I’m not exactly sure, but it seems as though the printing surface of my press had slightly warped to have a centered bulge. my press is just a 3/4 inch thick piece of wood with railroad board taped to it, so I’m guessing the the railroad boad may have soaked up some moisture during the previous pulls, enough that it slightly warped.

 

 the edges of the squeegee were not making contact at the ends, so I had to quickly turne the screen 90 degrees and reset my registration, before the screen dried too much. the result is: the black is slightly out of register. but so what? more importantly: why did the board warp? why did I never notice before?

 

I never noticed because I normally do not print posters horizontally- that is, I pull the image from top to bottom, not left to right. Because I was doing the split-fountain, and pulling the image at a different angle, the paper was positioned differently, and so the press was exposed to moisture in a different way. I am going to replace the railroad board, and think about sealing it before printing again.

 

interesting links from various sources:

 

a printer for toast : http://www.inseq.net/zuse.htm

a ping-pong display : http://www.tupajumi.com/pingpongpixel/index2.htm

awesome video clip : http://www.leobridlefilms.co.uk/Pop-ups/firstpost-qt.html