Pellafort Press - Thermochromic Wallpaper Printing

Preparation & Testing

I arrived at 9am at Pellafort Press and met with Scarlett Massel, owner of the press to discuss the plan of action. I decided to go over each design layer again, and perfect the layout then put each design layer into grayscale Colour Halftone format to prepare the image for screen. We then used the A1 printer to print each scale black and white image and exposed them onto each emulsion covered screen in the exposure unit.

After doing this for each screen, the emulsion was power washed off and I then spot filled with more emulsion to avoid spotting on the paper. The screens were then hardened off in the exposure unit again. We did a test screen with a piece of each design first to test the quality of the print, and adjusted the designs contrast on the laptop before we began the final peice.

The Screens & The Press

After the screens had all been exposed, spot filled and hardened off, they were ready for printing. To prepare the ink for printing, I mixed up the pure water based ink with the acrylic binder and did this for the blackk test ink, the yellow and blue inks, and later the thermochromic ink.

The first layer is the lightest ink - yellow, so the screen was fixed into the frame over the print bed and the paper laid out in the correct position. Then I printed onto acetate for registration and then began to print from one end of the paper and pulled it down to continue the next part of the print. I did this for four strips of paper measuring 53cm wide x 300cm long.

Building Print Layers

After the yellow layer was complete and sufficiently dried on the rack, I began the process again with the next layer of pattern, the blue design. After overlaying the blue layer and allowing to dry, I prepared the thermochromic ink by mixing the 31 degrees black slurry with the water based binder, and added 10% water to thin it out a little to make it easier to pass through the screen.

This is where I am at the moment, the last layer is printed but takes longer to dry so I have left it at the Press to dry completely and I will be picking it up tomorrow providing it is sufficiently dry.