February 24, 2006
Here's the completed jig that will be used to hold the blocks securely, both for the actual printing itself, and for the positioning of the sheets of paper carrying the design elements.
There are two rails screwed down to the baseplate - one along the front, and one at the right. The largest blocks will be positioned against these, and held in place by the offset clamps. Here is one in position:
I will be using three sizes of block altogether, and have prepared some plywood inserts so the jig can be quickly made ready for use with these. Here are shots with samples of each block in place:
Along the very front edge of the jig is a hinged rail on which the registration marks are located. It has to be hinged so that it can flip down out of the way of the path of the baren while printing the wide background. There are two magnet latches that hold it tightly in place when being used to register the paper.
I also prepared a set of thin metal spacers. During printing, due to the occasional uneven expansion/contraction of the paper, it sometimes becomes necessary to move the position of the registration marks slightly. This is a normal part of the printing process, and I going to try and make this a bit easier by inserting a few of these spacer strips between the blocks and the rails of the printing jig before starting work on each block. This will - I hope - provide me with a method of easily making those slight adjustments, by either inserting a few more strips, or removing a few, as required.
