1st CMYK experiment - process & results

[Jeansie]

A couple weeks ago, I asked a few questions about my 1st process color project. Thanks for all your answers and advice. I took pictures along the way to post here in hopes of feedback and critiques. I think the results are just OK - definitely lots of room for improvement. Mostly, I blame on the t-shirt press/lack of vacuum table for poor registration. (*The vacuum table is now built and ready to use for my next attempt. I've got the process of building the table in pix as well and will post in another thread.) I considered not posting at all out of embarrassment, but here we go:



Exposing the screens - I used a black light with a reflector hood hanging about 12 inches above the screen. The screen has foam underneath & glass on top. My exposure time was about 12.5 minutes.



Taped up the screen with regular masking tape & made sure everything was on hand to begin.


When I printed these, the vacuum table was not ready yet, but I thought it would be OK to go ahead with using the label tape for registration guides & re-positionable spray adhesive to make the paper stick in place. I'm still not entirely convinced that this was the only problem. In fact, I think it is more likely that my offset was too high. In some places, it would line up exactly right and on the same print something else would be out of registration. If the top lined up, the bottom looked terrible. I kept fine tuning as I went along, but I could never nail it down exactly. Hopefully the vacuum table will help me eliminate some variables & I can figure this out. Any thoughts?


yellow done



magenta done




cyan done





black done - time to clean up

Here are some details of where registration was worst:



Finished:


All-in-all, I think I coulda done a lot worse, but now I don't know what to do with these babies (50). I couldn't sell them? I don't know if it would be right to ask money for something that I know I could do better. Chalk it up to "experimental" and give 'em to friends, I guess. More paper & stuff are on the way and the exposure unit will be in the works next. I'll post again & we'll see if I can tighten it up. Meanwhile, I'm working on a spec poster for a regional festival in hopes of scoring my first gig. It is spot color, so hopefully it will be a lot easier to separate/register - we shall see.

Thanks in advance for any feedback!!

[vrooooom]

Of course you should sell them. Why try to print a perfect CMYK print, when there's already technology that can handle that much better than screen printing?

Looks pretty good overall for a first attempt, and even if you sold them for $5 a copy, you could make $250 to finance the next run.

Is there any "wiggle room" in your rig? If so, registration will always be problematic. You can clamp iron bars on the side of the lowered screen to prevent some weeble-wobble.

Using a 3 point registration system? Get card stock, with two on the longest side, and one on the short side, and edge it against the paper. This will keep registration on point for paper that's cut correctly, but there are a lot of ways to go about it. Lots of variables.

[oldbox]

I hope my first CMYK will be half as good !

[ASPrintingPress]

Yay Jeanne! Not too shabby for your first print, for realz. Keep at it and if you don't want to sell them you can always print other shit on top and make monoprints or cut them up and stamp or print business card info on the other side. Seriously next time you guys are in town call me up and we can print some shit!

Oh the only problem I see in this whole thread is you doing spec work, spec work = doo doo

NO!SPEC | To educate the public about speculative (spec) work

[Jeansie]

Thanks Errbody!

The business cards are a good idea. I'll pick out the best of the batch and save them or give them to friends and the ones that don't make the cut will be turned into business cards. I'll try the same design again with the vacuum table/hinge clamps and hope that I can get improved registration.

Seriously next time you guys are in town call me up and we can print some shit!

>> YES!!!

spec work = doo doo

Maybe I'm using that term loosely. The lady that puts on the festival is a friend of a friend. I thought I would work up a rough design and approach her for the job. Not too much time & virtually no materials wasted if she says "no" and I can save the illustrated element of the unused design for something else in the future. Bad idea? I read through ALL of the legal threads and needless to say there wasn't too much consensus about who to work with/be hired by (only that it definitely must not ever be the drummer's girlfriend). Usually the one with the wallet, right? What about this festival thing? Most of last year's acts were smallish local/regional jam bands What about using their band names on the poster? Will they all want a piece?