What I really wanted for my instrument panel was a nice silkscreened look, so I started looking into doing a silkscreen on my own. I have never done any silk screening, but I have always been interested in it, so this looked like a good project. I thought about buying a traditional silkscreen frame and applying photo sensitive chemicals, but I decided to try PhotoEZ, which is, basically, 8x10 sheets of precoated silkscreen material. You can actually get started with the PhotoEZ evaluation package for a lot less than a full-blown silkscreening setup, so this looked like a good process to look into.
With the PhotoEZ process, you create an image and print it on either paper or clear acetate. Then you use the printed image as a mask when you expose the presensetized silkscreen material under a UV light source. This takes either a minute or two in the sun or 5-10 minutes under a halogen lamp. Next, you develop the image by simply soaking the sheet in water in the dark for 15 minutes. Finally, you hold the sheet under running water to remove the photo sensitive material where the image was exposed. Dry this, and you have a traditional silk screen without the frame. There is a fine screen where the image has been removed that will pass paint just like a normal silk screen.
Initially, I tried the fine resolution sheets, but I had a lot of problems with it, so I ordered their standard resolution sheets. It seems that just about everyone does the same thing. They want high resolution, but the hi-res is hard to get right, so they either give up, or try the normal resolution sheets.
Using the normal resolution sheets, it took awhile to get the whole process down, but I managed to get fairly good at making PhotoEZ stencils and applying the paint to various surfaces. T-Shirts and paper surfaces were no problem, but painted metal test samples were another thing. Eventually, I was able to get a perfect image on the painted test samples, but repeating this every time was problematic. Either the paint did not stick, or it bled underneath the stencil. One minor problem with the standard resolution sheets was that you could see a grid in the paint, but it was not that bad.
With a little more practice I think I might have been able to perfect the PhotoEZ silkscreening process, but then I heard about DecalPro from one of the threads on the Vansairforce forums. This was via a link to Mark and Daves RV-7. It looked like Mark had tried most of the things that I had tried as well as a few processes that I had not gotten to yet. The last thing that he had tried before going with the DecalPro method was PhotoEZ, with the same results that I had seen.
Here are some of the pictures that I took of test panels using PhotoEz:
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Exposing the PhotoEZ sheet using a halogen lamp clamped to the underside of my homemade stool. |
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Closeup of the piece being exposed. We have a small test piece of PhotoEZ with the acetate image sheet on top, both clamped between a piece of Masonite and a sheet of clear plexiglass. With the test kit, you get two 3x4 test sheets and several 8x10" sheets of PhotoEZ, plus the piece of Masonite, plexiglass, and simple large paper clips to use as clamps. |
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The PhotoEZ test sheet ready to be used, after being exposed, soaked, and flushed with water. Obviously, this is not the first piece shown in the previous picture, since it does not match the pattern. I think the first piece was over exposed, and this is the second attempt. It took a bit of testing to get the exposure right. I think the final time was 5-6 minutes under the lamp. I cannot remember exactly, now, since I took these pictures 6 months ago. |
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The other side. |
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| Tape the stencil to the test piece. | Apply some paint. | And darn, it didn't work. |
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| Prints on cardboard. Not good, but it prints. | Tried white paint, still no good. Notice, I was too lazy to clear off the labels from my previous label tests. | Made another stencil, using several larger fonts. |
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| Hey, this is almost starting to be recognizable. A few technique problems, but at least you can read the labels. | Different paints, again, almost recognizeable, but each panel still has some problems. | Works on cloth a little better. Not great, but works. |
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| Bad. | Bad. | Bad. |  |
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| Bad. | Bad. | Bad. That Arial 14 doesn't even print on cloth. |
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Obviously, yellow won't work on this color of paint. | |
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Still bad. |
Ok, so none of those came out acceptable. After my first attempts, I ordered the normal resolution, and I got better results, but, apparently, I didn't take any pictures. I guess the results still were not that good. I am going to have to make some more panels to show what the normal looks like. Sorry, about that.