For the ISTD brief I wanted to focus my project more on the web aspect but I knew that the brief needed a print aspect aswell. I didn't have the time in university to book into many workshops which would have been great for this project but due to Christmas this meant that I had limited time to try out many processes. I did however get to laser cut and emboss some aspects of the project.
I tried out the laser cutter in the print brief and really enjoyed the process so I thought it would be beneficial for my own practice to try it out again. I only cut my logo as it was an experiment but I also cut an experiment for my print project. Perviously I cut into quite thick MDF which was not as easy to emboss so this time I asked for some thiner MDF. I set the cutter to 0.2 width instead of 0.1 due to the timescale. This meant that the laser left a larger gap between each stroke. This inturn was not the best option as it had to be cut again as it had not risen enough. Due to the amount of black space which was on the design it took around 40 minutes all together to cut the whole design.
Cutting the design:
Once the designs had cut up the technician cut them up on the large saw machinery. He said that it might be worth sanding down the design so that the paper would not get dirty when the pressure was added to it. Due to the lines being so spread apart the wood was shedding quite alot, I experimented with sanding down the background on one of my designs and found that this helped the design to become raised off the wood. I did this for the other designs I had cut and felt very positive about how they turned out.
Cutting down the designs:
Final wood designs:
Now that the designs are cut down and sanded I am really with them and I think they will emboss really well as the depth is quite significant.
At Vernon Street:
I took my designs down to Vernon Street to try out the embossing on the Hydraulic Nipping Press. I experimented with it on the paper which I had produced my print based designs on. I had also printed out some of my business cards to experiment with the emboss on them.
Laying out my designs:
Layering up the packing to go on the press:
Adding tissue to make help the board fit under the press. As I had used wood it made the design much thicker than the usual copper plate which is used at Vernon Street. In order to the design to fit under the machine I had to add extra tissue packing and remove one of the boards which the design sits on.
Design in the press:
How it worked out:
The emboss worked really well which was very positive but unfortunately the design had been cut down too much for the business card to be embossed properly. I found it very hard to line up the design onto the printed cards and also the paper folded around the wood block as it was too small for the size of the card. I experimented with the larger design to give it another effect but this design was too large. All in all the process was a great learning curve and though it was a disappointment it was not essential for my projecyt.
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