Success with 3D-printing a printing plate and using it for embossing and ink printing

[Jason]

Just wanted to share some recent success at my university using our brand new Replicator. Two of our professors (one from graphic design and another from printmaking) worked together to produce a printing plate, which was created in Cinema4D by extruding a 2D image and combining it with a solid plane. The size of the plate is about 5x5.5", and was printined with 100% infill, 0.27 layer height and 1 shells. Obviously there is room for improvement by bringing the shells down to 0, as there are many small details that were not filled properly by Skeinforge with shells activated.

I'm no expert in printmaking, so I can't elaborate too much on the details of her process, but hopefully the results will be helpful for others :) The printmaker produced an embossing (I hope I'm using the right word), and an ink print by running them through her printing press. She has suggested extruding the design further and maybe thickening the base a little bit for the next attempt.

I've attached some photos, but more are available on Flickr here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenwebb/sets/72157631694811357/

[PropellerScience]

Very cool!

[g. wygonik]

Absolutely wonderful! Great stuff, Jason; it's nice to see both embossing and prints. I wondered if you ever gave it a whirl. :-)

g.

[Lincoln K]

Awesome!  I've been wanting to try doing something like this, but didn't know if it would work.  Now I am excited to try it myself!

Lincoln

On Thursday, October 4, 2012 7:52:29 PM UTC-7, Jason wrote:

[Jason]

Just a little update for those interested. Two more printing plate variations have been tried out - one with the design slightly embedded into the plate, and one with the design extruded quite a bit (about 1/8") from the plate. 

The shallowly-embedded plate worked out fantastically well. The embossing produced from it was very crisp and well-detailed, and the filament lines were surprisingly smoothed out. If you're going to try to replicate this experiment, definitely go with this approach over extruded your design - the greater surface area helps the plate withstand the pressure of the printing plate much better.

The extruded plate had a much different embossing result than the shallow one - very large 'pillows' of paper along the edges of the features, which may or may not be desirable. As we expected, the smaller features were not able to withstand the pressure from the press, and broke off. We may try this one again and adjust the press differently, but for now, the extruded variation doesn't seem ideal.

Shallow plate photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenwebb/sets/72157631741040752/

Extruded plate photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zenwebb/sets/72157631741067808/

[Luis E. Rodriguez]

Amazing! beautiful work!

Luis E. Rodriguez

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[g. wygonik]

Awesome! Thanks for the updates on this!

g.

[Cymon]

I'm considering making a stamp from a 3D printing. Only I'm going to print my vertically on a roll. Think that'll work?

[Andrew Plumb]

You might be able to adapt Adam's old (GPL licensed) "lampshade.py" script for that purpose: https://github.com/makerbot/Makerbot/tree/master/scripts/lampshade

Andrew.

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[Bill Culverhouse]

Printing vertically allows for more detail IMHO. But you do need a fairly low layer height.

http://www.thingiverse.com/image:179086

Small details like the teeth would never print well flat. If you keep the image extrusion depth
low there shouldn't be much drooping from unsupported overhangs. The details in the coin
were extruded 1mm.

b

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[Aaron Double]

Either that or you could angle all of the walls off the details by 45 degrees.

Matters on your software, could be a pain in the ass.

Aaron Double