DIY Exposure unit plans inc. vacuum top

[ohdanielsan]

great work guys! hello to erling!

[Grimbalo]

Thanks Dan! I'm typing from Grahams account.
Maybe we'll see you guys again on a flatstock.

Cheers,
Erling

[kim_a]

Good to see that some cool stuff is happening back in the motherland.

Our old ikea-glass-table setup with foam and weighted down with cans of ink sure looks ghetto compared to this build, and the studiospace you guys have set up looks awesome.

[Grimbalo]

Thanks Kim!

Yeah there´s a lot going on over here, both artists and designers are beginning to take a look at screen printing again, when we started up two years ago there was very little action, just a small amount of artists struggling away, but more and more people are getting in touch and coming in to use the facilities or simply getting in contact for tips. We´re dead chuffed with the space at the moment but we never know how long we can be in any place, we have short term contracts in shabby places to keep the costs down but that means we have to move a lot....5 times in two years!!!

[kim_a]

We had our setup in a room at NKF in Trondheim, as the printing was part of our final project there, we got a good amount of stuff going in a short amount of time, but they kicked us out when we graduated and they decided to give the room to the journalism class.

Our stuff is still at the school, some of it is stored away and the table is standing in one of the classrooms, but theres no room for it being set up to actually print. A couple of the staff there seemed interested in giving us a space in return for giving workshops to the students and letting them use it for certain assignments. So far, nothing has materialized because there is only one of us left up there. Two of us have gone to SF (where we are looking for a place to print) and the other guy has moved down to Oslo, so sadly it doesn't look as if it'll be pulled out for a while... I believe you guys did a workshop with the Oslo-department?

[Grimbalo]

Reminds me of when i was studying at the Slade in London, we were a bunch of people who were a little mad for printing and got things going really well, but as soon as we were finished we weren´t allowed in anymore, last thing i heard things had gone seriously downhill.

Maybe we could get something running up in Trondheim again, a collaboration or something like that with your man that´s still over here, we´ve been working a lot with schools and universities recently, including 2 courses for NKF in Oslo (another on the way) and a course for the BA students in Tromsø plus a bunch of small things for random groups here and there. It´s been a while since i was up there and it´s always fun to travel and spread the love!

[kim_a]

I managed to get access to the printroom at London Metropolitan University this spring, wasn't easy to sneak in between the printmaking classes, but after a month of emails, I finally got in. They had a decent setup, shame that it was so hard for us on the graphic design course to gain access there.

Now, a collaboration would be fun. Our guy in Trondheim is still doing a course at NKF (motion graphics) while working freelance, I'm sure he'd be up for it, and we've got another guy in Oslo just sitting around looking for something to do aswell . I don't like the thought of our equipment just standing around gathering dust, I'll shoot you a PM.

[Jungle Junkie]

The Box is beautiful and the pics are great. However, even with the google sketchup pics here, my computer won't read the download. I still can't figure out what EVERY SINGLE PIECE of material is that you used and I also would like to see EXACT DIMENSIONS of everything so my partner and I know what and where to cut and glue/screw/tape/etc...

Basically, can you show us, STEP BY STEP with a COMPLETE MATERIALS LIST and DIMENSIONS OF MATERIALS, how to actually build this beast from scratch?



That would be a major help... Thank you.

[Grimbalo]

Hey up!

That´s a massive question!

To use the file, you´ll need to install Google Sketchup on your machine, it´s a great little program and it will let you take each component apart and see how it´s made and give you measurements if you use the ruler tool.

Obviously the designs are for the box we made which was built to expose a 190 x 150cm screen. Didn´t you say you were going to be printing t-shirts? I´m thinking that´d be way to big for you and you could save a load of money and space by making it smaller. Wood is obviously cheap but the fluorescents, glass and rubber are expensive......(at least over here in Norway.)

Another issue is of course with the wood, we´re metric in Norway and materials come in different standard dimensions over here. When building it´s obviously easier to work from standard stock material so that you can reduce the amount of carpentry required.

All that send and done it´s pretty easy to make, it´s just a box! Your first job is to decide what size screen you´d ideally like to expose, that will determine the length of fluorescent tube that is best and then you can work from there. The spacing between each tube and the distance between tubes and the glass are critical. If the tubes are spaced too far apart you´ll get a banded exposure, too close and you´ll need extra tubes and be wasting money. If the tubes are too close to the glass you´ll again get a banded exposure, too far and your exposure times will be lonnnnggggg. Andy Mac way very helpful on this one, his advice was 6" between glass and tube, and the same for the spacing between each bulb...this has worked perfectly for us!

I´m afraid i know little about US suppliers for fluorescent tubes and armatures, that´s the first thing to sort out. The tubes need to produce a specific spectrum of UV light....UVB (280 - 315nm....or there abouts) Philips and Osram/Sylvania produce products that´ll do the job, we ended up going for a tube from Sylvania:

Blacklight-Blue F36W/BLB - T8

We´ve got pretty limited suppliers over here and that was really the only one we could source cheaply, i imagine you´ll have a much better choice! The tubes are normally marketed as Black Light, Black Light Blue (Black Light with a blocking filter) or Tanning Lamps, just find a friendly supplier and ask questions. From my experience it was better to go for a T8 tube as the armatures were a lot cheaper and more available.

Ok, i need to do some printing, have a think and check out some suppliers, i´ll keep an eye on this thread

G

[Andymac]

aquarium tubes are the shitz (in a good way)....just sayin'....super actinic....we switched our commercial fluorescent UV units over to this type of bulb.



"Basically, can you show us, STEP BY STEP with a COMPLETE MATERIALS LIST and DIMENSIONS OF MATERIALS, how to actually build this beast from scratch?"

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