mesh printing…

IMG_6191


I’ve been experimenting with ways to combine the laxxxor and traditional printing techniques. The last week I’ve been playing with screen printing, and it’s working quite well. I’m using steel mesh that’s been sprayed with a clear coat. I use several passes with the laser to slowly and gently burn off the clearcoat where I want the image to come through.


I haven’t got the settings quite right yet, and they depend a lot on the exact thickness of the wire and the density of the weave in the mesh. So far I’ve found that < 100x100 mesh is too coarse. 100x100 works well although large open areas leave some texture from the mesh. Right now I'm lasering a screen with 150x150 mesh. See the Pioneer 10 plaque examples above for the results! 150x150 is RAD.


110 is a very common mesh size for normal photo-exposed screen printing using plastic screens. I don’t think my technique will work with plastic mesh, as the power needed to burn off the clearcoat is most likey more than enough to melt the plastic mesh. I’ve even managed to burn up some of the steel mesh. But so far I’m very happy with the steel results. I’m just using crappy homemade plywood frames, the wrong ink, a half-assed squeegie, etc., and I’m getting some nice prints. Yay! I haven’t tried re-using any of the screens yet. I guess I could just burn a 100% filled image to remove all of the clearcoat. Or maybe I can just spray more clearcoat onto the exposed parts. Will have to do more experiments.


Here’s a gallery of experiments with 70, 80, 100, and 150 screens. I used different images for each, so it’s not really a fair comparison. But so far 150 was the best for detail and consistency. 100 worked well for the ArtBots logo where there’s a lot of open space in the letters.


Steel mesh screen printing experiments.

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