Ultrasonic Cutters in ABS Engraver's Plastic Relief Printing

 Ultrasonic Cutters in ABS Engraver's Plastic Relief Printing 


One of the difficulties with using cutting ABS engraver's plastic for relief printing is that it is only 1/20" thick. So, you can't carve very deep, and larger shallowly cut areas are very easily soiled, "chattered", when inking unless great care and a very light hand is used, and that sometimes isn't enough. 

But I learned about ultrasonic cutters, and it occurred to me that they might be used to cut away the otherwise shallow white areas. Ultrasonic cutters vibrate a very sharp blade at a very high frequency, typically around 40,000 times per second. They are popular among model makers and anyone does small scale carving of wood, resin, plastic, etc. 

I tried it on the Wolf Woman ABS plate, since it has large cut areas. The ultrasonic cutter cut easily through the ABS and allowed very fine work. Because of the high frequency, the blade gets hot, and there is some melting, which tends to leave a small ridge among the cut. This would affect printing, likely resulting in ink not reaching the shadow of the ridge, much like a bit of debris on the plate leaves a halo around the inked dot. 

So, cuts need to have the ridge sanded down and perhaps beveled. I use a small rotary engraver with a sandpaper bit. Grinding stone type bits do not work well on ABS, and rotary file bits are hard to control for such fine cleanup. 

Here is the Wolf Woman ABS plate after cutting. 


I decided not to try cutting the tight areas on the face. Small shallow areas aren't so prone to taking ink chatter. I just cut them a bit deeper with a rotary engraving tool. The white areas alongside the cuts are from sanding the ridge flat. 

And here's the print. 


So, more learning. Let's see what still needs work. The white area adjacent to cut away places on the plate are just from sanding down the ridges. Note also that I left bridges to keep the isolated thin areas in place and made sure the bridges were filed down well.

You can readily see that I did a less than adequate job of leveling the ridges. Under the arms and in the back contours and the ends of the hair. And a few others where they might be mistaken for artistic artifacts. Those extraneous whites are where the ridge from melting did not let the brayer roll the lino adjacent to the ridge. Easily fixed, now that I know how sensitive it is.

BUT, the main thing is that I was able to ink more aggressively, fewer passes, more pressure, altogether a faster job of printing. I might try next time with a soft brayer. But everywhere that I paid enough attention leveling the ridges it worked exactly right. I did indeed get ink into the background. But because the large white areas were cut away, that ink landed on the newsprint below.

The tool is easy to use. I opted for the wired version, since battery life seems short on the rechargeables. They would like to sell you a special cutting mat that is supposedly does not melt and is self-healing. I bought one, and it's on its way back to Amazon. It did melt and stick to the back of the plate, and it did not self-heal. I discovered that I already had the best possible cutting surface, a sheet of traditional lino with woven jute backing. If you cut over it with the jute side up, the jute does not melt, the cuts mostly vanish, and it doesn't harm the blade. 

All in all, I believe I now have a handle on this technique. I will use it again. There are two real time savings. One is in not having to the tedious carving down of large white areas. The other is reduced time in printing from not having to worry about the background.

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Okay. Following up. This is the print from the plate after cleaning up most of the melt ridges. They could stand some more work on them. I accidentally broke off the thin pieces in the small of the back and used plastic packing tape to back them and tie the to the rest of the plate. Worked okay. Whole thin needs some more before editioning. 



I think this is final state. No glaring issues 



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