Joe Ledbetter Letterpress Process Thread

[Lttr Prssd]

Finally getting around to doing a process thread, since we can now do everything in house here at the shop.
We are doing a print and card by Joe; the print will be two colors (black and gold) plus a blind-debossed layer, the card will be black and gold as well.

Just found out, after five years of doing this, that the place across from our platemaker outputs negatives. I thought they were a digital print shop, and why no one told me this is beyond me. So here's a big ass negative straight from an Illustrator file:


I cut the negatives down, and then the photopolymer gets trimmed:


Into the exposure unit for 3 minutes:








Time for the wash-out, another 2 to 3 minutes:


One of the card images:


Two of the larger plates for the print:


Once it's washed out, we rinse the plates off, blot them and then into the drying rack for 20 minutes:


Once they dry, they need to come back up to room temp, and then get post-exosed for about 5 minutes.
Finished plates for the card:




Wanted to test one of the plates and the gold ink, so we threw this on the press. This will actually be printed in black for the finished card:






Next up is the printing.

[andydiesel]

nice

[TeddyPancake]

I know nothing about the letterpress process so this is cool to see.

[mictron]

letterpress is so awesome. but expensive.

looks great so far.

[el Jefe]

Very interesting, thank you for posting it. I would love to see something like this from start to finish in person.

[Johnny Crap]

Sexy.

[Lttr Prssd]

It's been a lot of fun learning about the photopolymer and everything else involved in printing with ink. The shop mainly did foil-stamping previously, so this is bringing in a whole new level to our capapbilities.

[loco]

Very cool,

Now you can do some of my art

-loco

[ASPrintingPress]

Holy crap man that's awesome you can make the polymer plates in house, so freakin jealous.

[Lttr Prssd]

Yeah, the owner sold his BMW motorcycle to buy that platemaking machine. It was a little tricky figuring out the right time and temp on everything, which would have been made a lot easier if we had just read the manual first.

Any time you wanna do something Henry, just let me know.