Sunday, February 19, 2012

Yudu Voodoo (and the amazing Cabbyrinth)

So, I like to screen print. I sort of like to go to AIR, but printing involves a lot of down time, and I can't really afford to spend a couple of hours waiting around for screens to dry every time I want to print something.

I read something somewhere about the Yudu printing machine, and I agonized about whether to get one, because it sounded easy. So many good reviews, but so many terrible reviews, also. Argh!

In the end, of course, I got one, or you wouldn't be reading this post.  I made this awesome print of a cabbyrinth. It worked great. Yay!  That's it. You're done now, unless you want to read a technical Yudu review.

The Yudu is a single unit that burns and drys your screen and then you also fit the screen in the top of it to print. The people in the reviews mostly complain about the emulsion sheets that come with the machine. These get dampened and stuck to the screen, and it would be really convenient if they worked at all, but they don't seem to. I certainly messed both of mine up, and it was all my fault, but since they cost $10 each I wasn't interested in experimenting any further.

Luckily, because of the reviews I had read, I also got the Hack the Yudu kit. This is a pretty straightforward liquid emulsion kit that costs $60 for tons and tons of uses, and will cost even less to replace since I'll only have to buy the consumables. Also because of the reviews, I got the Yudu squeegee pro (like a normal squeegee) to replace the lousy fake one that comes with the machine, and I used regular Speedball ink (much, much cheaper than the Yudu brand).

All this modification was totally worth it, because my first screen emulsified, burned, rinsed, and dried out perfectly. I started printing and got twenty (!) totally clean prints before I ran out of paper.

I'm sure if you're handy you could build your own printing set-up cheaper than the Yudu. But for some mysterious reason, I've never gotten results like this, including at art school. I guess I'm pretty sold.

If you're curious about trying it, definitely look around and maybe wait for a sale. I forget exactly how much mine cost, but it was well under $200 (a pretty deep discount). Then check out the videos on YouTube. People there can tell you everything you could possibly want to know about printing with the Yudu.

(Cabbyrinth print available in my Etsy shop!)

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