It's been a while since I posted any documentation. This is not because I haven't been doing work - quite the opposite. I've been working so much I haven't had time to document anything properly.
It has been an absolute nightmare few weeks. Bear with me here. There is a happy ending, I promise.
However, the number of times I have gone home in tears is actually embarrassing. So is the number of days when I spent more than 12 hours working solidly at elam.
Now that all the stress is behind me, though, I think it was worth it...
As mentioned in my last post (which seems nightmarish enough, but it just gets worse from there, so much worse…) when I removed the roller bar, the rubber belt got slack and rubbed against the bolts at the back.
Now that all the stress is behind me, though, I think it was worth it...
As mentioned in my last post (which seems nightmarish enough, but it just gets worse from there, so much worse…) when I removed the roller bar, the rubber belt got slack and rubbed against the bolts at the back.
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| The back of the conveyor, roller bar visible |
I figured I'd just sort this issue out later, and just get started straightaway, as I anticipated it was going to take ages so I was in a hurry to get printing. And then, when I took off the vinyl test layer, to my horror, it left residue all over the rubber, and I spent a full day scrubbing it off.
Then I began printing directly onto the rubber itself. It worked okay, would still scratch off when rubbed with a fingernail, so I did a few test patches with different gac / gel mediums mixed with the ink to improve adhesion. It seemed to work better with just the ink, and no additives.
To protect the prints from getting damaged during transit / handling / operation, I wanted to glaze them with some sort of clear plastic coat. I did a few test patches on the blank rubber and the one that worked best was a mixture of Gac 200 and some self levelling clear gel.
However, when I painted this over the prints, they dissolved. I had to scrub off the prints on the first conveyor belt and start over. Again.
So very depressing.
The next week, Ellen and I sussed out a way to seal the prints without this disintegration happening: using spray varnish and waiting for it to dry before applying the medium mixture. This became a very time consuming process as the varnish needed 24 hours to dry, and I could print the conveyors only 1/3rd at a time, with prepping and printing the screens took at least a day, plus drying time of the prints and the medium, so it took over a week to do the first two… It felt worth it, as I was so happy with the depth created by the wonderful sturdy layer of plastic-y varnish.
So very depressing.
The next week, Ellen and I sussed out a way to seal the prints without this disintegration happening: using spray varnish and waiting for it to dry before applying the medium mixture. This became a very time consuming process as the varnish needed 24 hours to dry, and I could print the conveyors only 1/3rd at a time, with prepping and printing the screens took at least a day, plus drying time of the prints and the medium, so it took over a week to do the first two… It felt worth it, as I was so happy with the depth created by the wonderful sturdy layer of plastic-y varnish.
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| (The bits of masking tape at the bottom are markers) |
Until it leaned against a chair leg overnight and stuck, ripping up a chunk of the medium as well as the print underneath. And then, horror of horrors, the same thing happened with some glad wrap that had been on the ground and got stuck to it, ripping off a whole section of the glaze/print as I carefully peeled it off. And then, once a finished/glazed conveyor had had a full week to dry, I put the roller bar back in, left it overnight, and realised that this was never going to work.
How silly to think I could apply a layer that was both a) adhesive enough to stick to the rubber, and b) not adhesive enough to stick to anything else. Um. Can't really have both.
Even without the roller, the belt would make contact with the bolts on the other side, which would cause same problem elsewhere.
How silly to think I could apply a layer that was both a) adhesive enough to stick to the rubber, and b) not adhesive enough to stick to anything else. Um. Can't really have both.
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| a distinct indented line was left wherever the roller stopped... |
Even without the roller, the belt would make contact with the bolts on the other side, which would cause same problem elsewhere.
Basically, I was not even back to square one, I was ten steps behind where I started.
Getting the varnish off all the prints so far took many days of hard labour, several metres of brillo pads, some paint stripper and a bottle of turps. Nothing could be more demoralising than having to put in this much effort to scrub off your art just to start over again. My blood, sweat and tears went into this artwork. Literally.
Getting the varnish off all the prints so far took many days of hard labour, several metres of brillo pads, some paint stripper and a bottle of turps. Nothing could be more demoralising than having to put in this much effort to scrub off your art just to start over again. My blood, sweat and tears went into this artwork. Literally.
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| removal in progress - bottom left corner. |
So, two weeks of intensely hard work wasted; physically and emotionally exhausted; and after having massacred my brain cells from the fumes (I wore a proper respirator mask while using paint stripper, but I'm still paranoid about those toxic fumes) - I started again.
Pete, the metal workshop technician, said I should cover up the roller with soft tape, but I decided to remove the roller altogether, and print onto the rubber using no other media. This was a reluctant defeat. I'd liked the conceptual connections, with the spray varnish linking to the 'dip spray' treatment of imported produce, the gel coat relating to petroleum based wax some fruits are coated with in order to 'maintain freshness' etc. Instead, the list of materials would now read, simply, 'ink on conveyor.''
This way doesn't have quite the same depth but is much more simple, and means it will be easy to re-do any prints should they get damaged in transit from one building to another, etc - rather than having to strip the glaze off and patch it up again, which I’d realised would never work. Sure, without the roller the edges will rub against the bolts at the back, but without the glaze, this damage won’t be evident, as long as the prints themselves are well clear of the edges.
This way doesn't have quite the same depth but is much more simple, and means it will be easy to re-do any prints should they get damaged in transit from one building to another, etc - rather than having to strip the glaze off and patch it up again, which I’d realised would never work. Sure, without the roller the edges will rub against the bolts at the back, but without the glaze, this damage won’t be evident, as long as the prints themselves are well clear of the edges.
So I got printing... Again.
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| more masking tape markers |
Each screen takes at least a couple of hours prep time - and things occasionally go wrong while water blasting, right at the end, and the process needs to start over.
Considering these hours that went into prepping the screens, it felt like a waste to clean them off again straight away. So I tripled my workload by doing some prints on paper - white on black, and coloured on white - before cleaning the screens for the next rotation of prints.
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| Prints on paper |
Of course, with our essay drafts due a while ago, I've been working on my essay at the same time as all of the above. The silver lining of the whole horrendous process I've just described is that it inspired me to come up with the analogy between screen printing and agriculture. Now I know full well how a farmer would feel over a failed crop, and why they would turn to resorts like pesticides, chemical fertilisers etc. if the situation called for it. I would usually never use toxic chemicals like turps and paint stripper, but desperate times do indeed call for desperate measures!
And I have also been busy in the metal workshop, making...
-legs for the white conveyor belt;
-new brackets for the black ones, which I redesigned after my visiting artist crit because I thought other method was kind of clunky (and, to continue my streak of bad luck, I had to go back to the steel shop because someone stole the metal i’d bought a few weeks earlier!!)
-brackets for the sensors
And now that the black ones are done, I've been thinking hard about what to print on the white conveyor belt. Screen printing won't be possible on these due to the textured surface and the roller bars underneath which are not removable, but the vinyl stickers I have printed seem to work fine. But do I really want to print more fruit, or found fruit/veg boxes, onto this? I've got a few other ideas... the only issue now is TIME. And not enough of it. One month to go!!
-legs for the white conveyor belt;
-new brackets for the black ones, which I redesigned after my visiting artist crit because I thought other method was kind of clunky (and, to continue my streak of bad luck, I had to go back to the steel shop because someone stole the metal i’d bought a few weeks earlier!!)
-brackets for the sensors
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| hard at work |
