Direct to plate Photopolymer gravure from start to finish!

[@DanCarrollActor]

Great waste basket shot at the end. Love the sound track too.

[@bleddyndavies6827]

Outstanding work

[@dustyherbig]

Nice 3 pointer . . .

[@lucidimaginguk]

So satisfying to watch. An artisan at work. 🖤

[@heliopolis0]

That print is a piece of Art!!! What a fantastic and unique way of printing. My ink Jet procedures seem kindergarten in comparison 😅

[@robertozanetti7707]

Great work .........................................fantastic video

[@JanetDiaz6152]

Love, love your vids... Im new and learning. Thank you.

[@dev9184]

incredible!

[@olivierbolton8683]

Beauty!

[@pierrez8455]

The State of Vermont (greatest State in the Union) . Yes! For sure 😍

[@Agedwheel]

Wow! Who’s work were you printing? That dark desert scene blows me away

[@buckb]

Do you guys have a shop playlist? The music is lovely...

[@michaeltrupiano5523]

When in the process would you normally trim the plate if you wanted a consistent border (imprint) around the final print?

[@ConeEditions]

We print our trim marks and do our trimming after we have final hardened the plate with the second exposure (4x the calibrated exposure). The trim marks give us consistency. You just increase the canvas size with a white margin around your area to the size of the borders you want, and then add 1 pixel all around of gray or black canvas size to form the trim edges.

[@keesbrandenburg]

Where can I find this kind of washing pad you are using? Do you prefer this over a brush?

[@ConeEditions]

Hi Kees, it's a ceiling painting pad. You can get them at hardware or paint stores. Best regards, Jon

[@keesbrandenburg]

@@ConeEditions Thanks! How simpel can it be.

[@pierrez8455]

Really a very big thank you Jon for this video. Excellent. May I ask what is the product added to the 12'?

[@ConeEditions]

That's just a bit of thin (#00) plate oil I am adding to a sample of ink that happened to be the same recipe as the one I was mixing... It had dried somewhat from use - so I was just restoring it a bit to recondition it..

[@goldcoasttime]

@@ConeEditions can this be used as an alternative to computer to print laser machines

[@ConeEditions]

@@goldcoasttime It can be used as an alternative to computer to plate laser printers used in the pad printing industry. The UltraHD Matte Black ink at InkjetMall is the darkest and most opaque ink ever made in the inkjet industry. With it you can use 2880dpi on a supported EPSON printer. You can also print as low as 320. Point being it is fully opaque so that when you expose the pad plate it works. However, the pad plate has to be compatible with aqueous inkjet - like a Toyobo Printight Solar Plate (KM73) which is commonly available. UltraHD Matte Black ink is here: shop.inkjetmall.com/shop?search=ultrahd+matte+black&attrib=44-206

[@stevenskowron7318]

what inks do (brand, specific blacks) you use and modifies added?

[@ConeEditions]

We use oil based inks from Gamblin and Charbonnel. The blacks we like are Bone Black (which is very dark and produces open mid-tones and quarter tones...) and Carbon Black which is warmer, and occasionally Portland Black if we want to strengthen the mid-tones. Any of these blacks we can make warmer or cooler or more neutral by addition of color inks. Generally, our calibration process produces prints that match the display but often during proofing these decisions to strengthen or open come about seeing the work progress. The only modifiers we use are Hanco's Zea Mays transparent base (10-30%) and a little easy wipe.

[@pierrez8455]

Jon, I'm intrigued. I feel like you are handling the plates in daylight. It doesn't have the power of UV light, but still no impact on the plates ?

[@ConeEditions]

It looks that way for sure - but the entire building is lit by LED tubes that are low UV emitting. The State of Vermont (greatest State in the Union) bought them for us to reduce our electricity costs saying they would pay for themselves in just 3 years - and they have! They are 5000k and we dim them depending upon the sensitivity of the emulsions we are using. Having said all that, the iPhone normalized the scene and made it look brighter than it actually is...

[@stevenskowron7318]

what is the fabric used for wiping?

[@ConeEditions]

You can not use traditional tarlatan with polymer because it aggressively removes ink. So we use Akua spun polyester wiping cloth by Speedball.

[@jag24x]

Great video from start to finish! Is that a custom made etching press ? What is the diameter of the rollers? Thanks!

[@ConeEditions]

That press is made to order by Takach Press. It has 10" diameter rollers.

[@stevewilsonAmbropoetica]

Thanks for sharing! Are these solar plates marketed by Dan W. or other?

[@ConeEditions]

No. There are sold by InkjetMall here: shop.inkjetmall.com/Solar-Plates

[@enricobertola]

Nice video, thank you. Is there no need for a screen exposure using this method, or are you introducing a dot pattern in your image?

[@ConeEditions]

No need for a screen. With direct to print the actual dots from the inkjet printer provide the "screening". It can be done at 2880dpi with the UltraHD Matte Black ink that Inkjetmall.com sells for Epson printers. Or it can be done at 1440 dpi with Epson black ink. We also have a three ink method which prints at such fine resolution, that it looks photographic without any dot textures whatsoever.

[@howardcrow]

Nice Vid - what is the purpose of adding the transparent base to the ink?

[@Inkjetmall]

Our process uses the Piezography Pro ink set and the Piezography software - and we are able to separate 256 gray levels in the plate. That's considerably more than copperplate photogravure. Adding transparent base is critical to that - and we lose nothing. We can get a very dark black even with 30% transparency - so what the transparent base does is open up a lot of the mid and dark tones. Without doing this, those tones would not be as smooth - although some people prefer chunky shadows... we prefer open shadows with lots of transitions between the shades...

[@howardcrow]

@@Inkjetmall thank you, good insight

[@bjornandersson1588]

Nice and instructive video. What material are you using for wiping the plate?

[@ConeEditions]

Even though we print with oil based intaglio inks, we wipe with the Akua wiping cloth which is much less aggressive than tarlatan. We finish wipe with unbuffered interleaving tissue.

[@christiangrnnebk1067]

Thanks a lot. Are you using QuadtoneRIP as a printing software? Would you mind sharing your curves settings?

[@ConeEditions]

For our in-house projects and for plates we produce for customers, we do not use QuadTone RIP. We use our own printer driver which we are developing. And we use a version of Piezography software to make a linearization/calibration which is resident inside the printer driver itself. When we teach workshops we use the QuadTone RIP driver and we teach our attendees how to use the Piezography UltraHD™ Matte Black and create a calibration for QTR using the Piezography software.

[@azfactor7875]

In the process of making the plate, it appears that no aquatint is required for direct-to-plate. I'm curious as to why it is not necessary.

[@ConeEditions]

We are printing the aquatint: What we have done is designed our own printer driver that can produce a very fine pattern of opaque ink droplets. Depending upon the printer model we can print up to 5760 dots of ink per inch. So, what we do is use an unordered dithering that simulates aquatint with mostly very tiny drops of inks and the occasional larger drops of inks. These are printed with a fully opaque ink we formulate which is part of the Piezography ink set we invented. The image is printed with its own "aquatint" so to speak. Very light tones get a very light printing of these droplets while darker tones get more compressed droplets of inks. Then the plate needs just an exposure without glass or film...and as a result the resolution of these tiny droplets holds and the image is formed on the plate when it is developed. Those tiny divots hold ink when the plate is hand wiped.

[@boxkam]

Printer settings, Curve? :)

[@ConeEditions]

This process uses several monochromatic inks from the Piezography black and white ink set. This is the same ink set that produces tens of thousands more gray levels than EPSON color inks... we do provide full library of free curves for all EPSON and popular 3rd party media for black & white prints, and also curves library for making digital negatives for alternative processes...but the curves for this multi-ink Direct to Plate are only available when you come take a workshop with us. You need a supported EPSON printer to install the Piezography ink set. The workshops are here: www.cone-editions.com/workshops and we have an online pre-recorded demonstration on it here: shop.inkjetmall.com/DTP-ZOOM.html

[@boxkam]

@@ConeEditions I sold my printer with the Piezography ink set, now using Epson P8000, I'm a printmaker, (learded from Dan weldon 2000) i'm just looking for more Information on direct to plate printing...

[@ConeEditions]

@@boxkam there are a lot of ways to do this process with direct to plate and the more popular method uses black ink only. That is how we started, then we moved to two inks, and now we offer three inks and are separating 256 gray levels on a photogravure plate. We use the Piezography Profiler to do that. We do offer Piezography ink set for the SureColor P6000, P7000, P8000 and P9000 printers. Those are our latest generation supported printers. If you wish to stick with your OEM inks you could install QuadTone RIP and print with the black ink only and generate a single curve on your own... It is not difficult at all to generate a single ink curve with QTR. You should be able to separate 100 gray levels or close to it. You can start with just 21 steps, and then comfortable with that move to 51 steps. Then go for the 100.

[@boxkam]

@@ConeEditions I have QTR and DN pro, I've been making DN for years, Just trying to get more info on Direct to plate :)

[@ConeEditions]

​@@boxkam I'm Jon Cone, do you have my email? Easier to answer questions that way...

[@colachocifuentes]

👁️🖤

[@sakerhaleu9367]

Bonjour ! Je peux avoir le numéro de téléphone. J'ai besoin de plaques polymères.

[@Inkjetmall]

Nous ne vendons que des plaques que nous produisons et qui sont prêtes à imprimer. www.cone-editions.com/gravure