I’ve wanted to try it for a long time, but never got around to it. I’m curious about any techniques that are more grass roots outside of the commercialized space, like what are the absolute minimum things needed when repeatability, convenience, and time are not important factors, but money and access to rare markets is extremely limited? What have you made before?
Like:
- a (blank) makes a good screen, or (blank) is an alternate technique to screens
- (blank) can work as a replacement for emulsion
- (blank) is an alternative for ink
I’m personally interested in printing on t-shirts, but also printing silkscreens on circuit boards.
Haha insane, I swear this popped into my head out of nowhere yesterday.
Well not entirely nowhere, but I work with plant dyes. So far I’ve only dyed wool, but I suddenly had the idea to create some T-shirt printing process with what grows around here. A dye bath and ink are rather different things though, so I’d be curious for ideas how to turn plant pigment into ink, or where to look?
I’ve never even seen normal silkscreen printing done, but vaguely understand the idea. I’d try different fabrics stapled to a wooden frame as sieve, and maybe use wax to cover the non-print areas?
For a non natural method - could 3D printing be interesting for making sieves?
And what is an emulsion?
I’m not sure about dyes, but from what I’ve seen, the viscosity of silkscreen inks is about like honey. I think of dyes as a water base with a consistency of alcohol. Perhaps something like that could be sprayed with a mask, but I can’t picture it lasting for many wash cycles.
I’m a mod for the main 3d printing community here :) Indeed there are some examples that can be found where people print directly on fabric that has been attached to the print bed. Generally, TPU will last longer through more wash cycles, while PLA will work but well come loose eventually.