Experiments with Colour Litho prints

As some Hivers will recall I have been 3D printing lithos as presents for a while as they do make very nice individual unique Christmas and birthday gifts.

I have seen a few commercial colour lithos for sale and people are charging a fortune which got me thinking how hard can it be?

I had a rough idea how to do them the difficult bit is getting the 3D Print and colour print to size match. Getting decent colour print as my very cheap Epson inkjet is getting on a bit, it takes a few runs to clear the jets and get a clean print which is a bit frustrating. I only got it as a stop gap when my expensive Canon Photo printer gave up the ghost a few years ago one Christmas. So maybe time to look for a new printer once the ink runs out.

I have used a Polar White filament for printing lithos for some time as I like the sepia tone it gives the print.

For the colour sheet I’m trying a inkjet print tracing paper and a transparency film that is also suitable for inkjet printing.

The transparency film gives a crisper print but I have yet to find a good way to get it to permanently stick to the Litho. But the end result is quite good.

There you have it Hivers I’m still not 100% happy but not too bad for a work in progress. I still need to design a suitable light box to display them but that is the next thing on the list.