If you have some shots of your baby you would like to share you can upload them here

There's a new Baby on the block!

Etching Presses For Laos!

CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE PROGRESS SO FAR!

Great Job Does The Heart Good

An Example of a Small Direct Drive table press

Good work Duncan!

Thank you for your included info on your building experience very helpful!

Hi Doug,

The plans are excellent. Here are a couple of photos of my first press, totally home made except for the bearings and the phenolic resin press bed, it's much smaller than yours but the results are very good according to my wife. (She's the artist, I'm the artisan and general assistant.) I've learnt some things along the way so I'm all fired up to build one even better!


The rollers are 46cm wide and about 6 cm in diameter. The press bed itself is 46 cm wide by 70 cm long so it easily accommodates A3 paper. The small size of the rollers, especially the bottom roller, means that you can use a direct drive rather that gearing or chain drive; ours is direct drive to the bottom roller and it works really well. Having said that, it's all in your plans - you just scale them to fit what you want, what materials you can get and what your workshop will accommodate. I don't know what it's like in your country, but here in England the bearings are ridiculously cheap so long as you don't want high speed ones, which we don't, so it's not worth making your own housings or anything, however the take-up bearings I used came in a fairly standard carrier with a larger slot than the 8mm steel I used for the uprights so I had to fit some gib strips (is this an international or an English expression?) If you think it would be useful I'll send you some pics with a ruler on them so you can judge the scale. ( Do you still use proper inches over there or have you been "metricated"?)

It might interest constructors in England to know that my total cost (excluding effort!) was in the region of £120 of which £40 was for the phenolic resin press bed.

thought of something else that might be helpful to builders of smaller presses. I've attached a photo showing the take-up bearings raised to lift the top roller and you can see where I had to cut out the side plate and bottom bearing housing to allow the small diameter rollers to come closer together (arrowed on photo). For the same reason the press bed is thicker, and more expensive, than would otherwise be needed. The other thing I had to do was mount the bearings on the outsi de of the side plate rather than inside, but it's only one more hole and some serious effort with a big file!

Once again I'm full of praise for what you have produced!

Great Job Tom!

And thank you for your helpful comments Im sure they will be of help to other press builders

Note the welding on the top.

High quality acme threaded rod with brass machined insert bolted in
place. Note also the nylon washer above the nut, which is fixed with
a set screw to adjust the tension on the washer. No up-down slop at all.

My answer to calibration issues. The top roller is calibrated to the
bed, and then the two dial calipers are zeroed. We still need to
adjust this to vertical.

The old bicycle crank works really well for the crank handle, with
the axel cut in half and inserted into a hole in the 5/8" rod end.
Then welded into place. The handle is some kind of plastic that was
lathed to fit on the peddle shaft.

The bed is two 1/8" hardboard layers and 6 1/4" hardboard layers
glued with white glue. Total cost is $50, so if we have to re-do it
with expoxy it isn't a big deal.

I had to weld plates to the back of the sides to hold it in a
vertical milling machine.

Realistically, you need access to a machine shop to do it yourself. I
turned the bottom roller on an older lathe, but it vibrated terribly.
We sent the upper one out to be turned, and they did a terrific job
for about $120. I went high end on some components, and the total
amount was about $1700. But I feel I have a $4000 machine in terms of
accuracy.

Thanks for your great plans.

-Tom

Wow!

Hi Doug,
As I promised, I send you some better pictures of my portable press.
All the press is made of aluminium anticorodal, an aeronautical league, the cylinders are cm. 52 wide and have a diameter of mm. 140.
If I need to move the press I take off the bed (cm. 130x52) that weights nearly 18 Kg. and I deplace everything by myself. The press itself weights around 30 kg. So I thing the total weight is less than 50 kg. (less than lb 111).
Greetings, Walter

What Can I Say, A True Work Of Art Walter!

The size is 33.5 x 55(bed). Works great, real smooth. I am looking forward to building another now that I know it works so well. Hoping to sell the next one and at least pay for the first.
Sincerely, Doug Jaap

Specs: 32" roller width. 8" diameter top roller, 6" bottom roller.
Sailboat steering wheel for a drive wheel (required changing the shaft on the driving sprocket to a 1" shaft to fit the standard 1" keyway in the wheel). I powdercoated the steel parts in a beautiful copper-vein hammered finish to complement the copper spacing pipes. I'm currently using a melamine bed, but am looking to upgrade to something a little less compressable (perhaps Aluminum with a phenolic resin laminate?). The press is installed at Saltgrass Printmakers (www.saltgrassprintmakers.org) where it's being used with great results!

-Erik

Eric... Just gave birth and what a smoooooth delivery it was!

Would just make you want to go over and be his best friend wouldn't it!

Here is the skinny on the press.
The rollers are about 36 5/8 in width, for large format posters. The press plate is about 48x37. The entire press is enclosed by birch plywood with drying racks for about 27-54 posters (depending on size). I move a lot so the table was built in about five pieces that fit together. The shelves on the bottom are 3'x3' cubes that bolt easily together.
There are large wood pieces that fit over the top that allow me to use the press as a work space when I am not using it.

Eric has been kind enough to share the plans for his great press bench design...Download Plans

Mel..... a thing of beauty I'm speechless! I'm sure you will all agree a great press for a great guy!

Stuart has a new baby! And a fine baby she is looks like there might be a new baby boom in the works. Great job Stuart I'm sure it will all come flooding back once you get started again.

Here it is. Rollers are 31 inches long and 6 3/4" OD. The bed is 34X60. I'm a bit out of practice but it looks like it will print well, once I get the hang of it again....................regards........... Stuart

Richard's got a new baby, born around Sept October 2002! Great job should be able to pull some good ones with this baby! I know it was a tough delivery but she appears to be doing fine.

GREAT JOB RICHARD!

Finished press bed is 36" x 66" rollers are 34". It works smoothly.
You may notice that the gear box is quite thin as the axle end on the bottom roller which was adapted from a different design was only 3". This
necessitated quite a few changes. the paint is a hammered finish silver.
Richard

Chris sent in these photos of their new baby I think you will agree she is as beautiful as she can be.

I would like to quote a rather famous Canadian Red Green he once said "If your wife don't find you handsome, she should at least find you handy" I don't know if the first part of this quote applies I've never met Chris but I certainly know the latter part does. Great job!

A few notes from Chris:

Roller length is 30", the bed is 34"x34" and total length is just over 60". I doubt my wife will ever pull a print that large but who knows? Feel free to use the photos. As far as hints, I made the project tougher than it needed to be. My wife was very skeptical of the project so I over engineered some of the materials. Thicker steel plates etc. It was overkill. The size of the rollers and plates make it heavy and awkward to put together. I should have followed your plans to keep the weight down. I work for a newspaper and have access to a machine shop. So I really was able to keep the cost low by machining the plates and rollers myself from scrap that I purchased at a yard. Total cost was about $800 and most of that was for gears and take up bearings. The table is made from fur 2x10's and fur 4x4 posts. I turned the posts on a lathe and mortised the 2x10 sides into the posts. My wife insists that it is better than the Takach she used to borrow at a friends studio. The plans were great! Thanks for saving me about $5,000.

Fine job George she is a mean lean Etching Machine!

Hi Doug,

Finally finished my etching press after downloading the plans last year. It took awhile, but the result is pretty good I think. The machinist who made the press made a suggestion which you might incorporate in your plans, to add a stiffener inside the roller, so as to prevent bending the axle. Mine is 30" and it works like a dream!

Regards,

George

Paul's Press

Note the heavy duty casters on the bench so that the press can be moved around and the great pressure turn screws and custom wheel. Fine job Paul!

This is a photograph of a 24" hand operated press I built for my daughter.
The only parts I purchased for this press were the printing rollers (6" stainless steel fabricated by a machine shop)and the bearings and gears The black walnut for the bench I salvaged from a barn demolition and the cast iron wheel I found in another barn.

A 32" motor driven press with oak siderails built from plan set 1