Laser-Cut Plates

Howdy all. See attached. I laser cut this graphic as a test yesterday. Does anyone have any knowledge-stream, pros or con, for using this as a cut-like block for printing? Once it gets type-high of course. The material is inknown and may not hold up to the pressure I am thinking. Let me know your thoughts please.

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Dang, sorry for the typo. The material is unknown.

Just stick it in a press and see what happens. I print with all kinds of stuff and most of it prints quite well if it is relatively flat and type high.

Except glass. Trust me on that one.

Hey, Arie! You know, glass tends to shatter when you put it under pressure! (Captain Obvious, to the rescue!) :-)

Dadofguads: Moore Wood Type’s primary method of production is now laser cutting of wood. I expect yours will work fine. The only problem I have with it is that it leaves the cut-away areas very, very rough and hard to clean. Pantograph-cut wood type stays much cleaner in the counters.

Michael Hurley
Titivilus Press
Memphis, TN

But does the glass stay intact? Do the cracks show after it’s shattered? Does each impression make it worse? I actually want to do a print with a background that looks like shattered glass. Was going to get a polymer plate for it, but hey if the real thing with do.

Sorry for hijacking the post. There’s a ton of discussion on laser engraving for letterpress printing here:

http://www.briarpress.org/27881
http://www.briarpress.org/15868
http://www.briarpress.org/41650
http://www.briarpress.org/15799

Thanks all — I will check those posts out. Test # 2 — this test was cut on the backside of a type-high sort, doing double-duty with extra blocks could be a good use of material.

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Lammy:

Nope. Slivers of glass in the ink and embedded in the rollers. It had to be tried…once. I had some glass with a fairly nifty embedded pattern I thought would look nice when printed. Similar experiments with clay worked fairly well. Took hours to clean the press after the glass broke.

You might be able to use scotch tape bits to simulate broken glass. That prints fairly well.

Lammy…get some broken glass, ink it up to be opaque on the surface, expose to polymer plate maybe but this will mean cracks will print……could ink up glass photograph and reverse that in photoshop etc to expose to polymer plate, or scan in to a lazer cutter to cut either from polymer plate or other suitable surface maybe.An older way would be to ink up and expose to a negative working litho plate, or take an inked up proof and transfer to grained lithoplate or stone and reverse if necessary, or even photoetch a plate that could be printed typehigh.