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Need advice from a screen-printing expert.

nomadradio

Analog Retentive
Apr 3, 2005
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www.nomadradio.com
I need to acquire some skills in the art of screen printing. Made plenty of posters 40 years ago this way. But what I need to do now is a bit more demanding in the accuracy department than the average t-shirt requires.

This is what most web sites offering screen-print supplies and stencil-making services are about, t-shirts.

I have decided that laser-printing meter scales on paper has too many drawbacks. Paper is a convenient get-by strategy for prototypes, but I'd like to print the scale directly to the blank white surface of the aluminum scale plate.

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Laser print on plastic sheet looks better, but the software I use only yields one meter scale for each 8.5 by 11 print. The plastic sheets at the office-supply stores are too pricey to print one meter scale per sheet.

The kicker here is dimensional accuracy. The meter-scale CAD I use is called "Meter", sold by Tonne Software. It will send images directly to the Windows print device, or to a file in HPGL format. They come out the exact, desired size on the printer this way.

Just how I get a HPGL file translated to a screen stencil pattern, and to a finished screen is where I'm stuck.

The dimensions really have to match the original printer output. Not a lot of margin for error.

I'll continue surfing screen-print service web sites, but advice from someone with experience could save me some wasted time and money figuring out just how to obtain a ready-to-use screen for this task.

Ideally, getting multiple meter-face images on one screen would sound more economical, but getting them translated from HPGL, and laid out together on one image file has me baffled. Never claimed to be a graphics-art wiz.

73
 
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Reactions: Tokin

I think you’re searching for a dying art. Everything today is vinyl & sublimation printing. T-shirts are now “print em, weed em, press em”...with plenty of time to drink coffee in between steps.

I’m sure what you need is out there...but good luck finding it.
 

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