Screen Printing Tests

Time is running out! Only 2,5 weeks left before we are headed back home.

Up in Ísafjörður it's been a busy couple of weeks. One of the recent projects was doing some screen printing tests using the vinyl cutter to make a pattern and then testing it out on some fabric.

Went rather well! The image used is a logo from Garbage's single You Look So Fine, will not be used commercially and only for the purpose of testing the technique out.

First we cut out the images on the vinyl cutter.

Transferring them to the screen.

Sealing the edges with some discarded material from the Flag Factory (see earlier blog post).

And it's testing time!

We have an image! I think two of the small bits in the middle were reattached into a slightly different position after they got removed in the process. But the technique worked well.

Two tests were made. First one with the vinyl image attached to the bottom of the screen, second one with the image on the top. Attaching the image to the top of the screen is not recommended. When the paint is applied, it will get below the edges of the cut image, and can very easily ruin the image and make it smudgy.

But if you need a single-time use image for screen printing, vinyl cutter can be of help creating the pattern for sure.

Finnish! ->

Elikkä jokunen aika sitten tuli tehtyä muutama silkkipainotesti vinyylileikkurilla leikeltyjen kuvioiden kanssa. Hyvin toimi, kuten yläpuolelta näkyy :) Testasimme kahdella tavalla. Toisessa kiinnitimme kuvion kehikon alapinnalle ja toisessa yläpinnalle. Alapinnalle kiinnitetty kuvio toimii huomattavasti paremmin. Kun kuvio oli kiinnitetty yläpinnalle, jonne painoväri levitetään, väri pääsi helposti leviämään kuvan alle ja sotki lopputuloksen.

Enää pari viikkoa vaihtoa jäljellä ja paljon projekteja viimeisteltävänä!

Aaaaaaagh!

Reykjavik and Golden Circle

Hi y'all!

Here is a brief photographic report on one trip to Reykjavik and a tour of the Golden Circle. T'was fun!

Tässä kuvareportaasi Reykjavikin reissusta ja Golden Circle -kierroksesta. Kivaa oli!

Stopover during the car trip down South.

On the road.

First stop of the Golden Circle tour. Pretty views!

Mountains coloured by the morning sun.

 Moar after the cut.
Lissää sisempänä.

Visit to þingeyri

Last week we did a day trip from Ísafjörður to þingeyri with þórarinn (Fab Lab manager here at Ísafjörður), and four Danish exchange students who arrived earlier the week.

 þingeyri is located about 45 minutes South West from Ísafjörður. The trip used to be a bit longer before a tunnel was built through a mountain along the way in 1996, and in wintertime it was on occasion impossible to do even. The tunnel was a little over 6 kilometers long, and even had crossroads.

The views all the way were amazing, and the slight coating of snow we got on the mountains a day before made them really stand out when the damp weather turned them pretty dark otherwise. The fjord where the town is located in is wide and has plenty of rocky beaches. Lots of sheep still herding about. And a couple of Icelandic horses, too!

A view from one area of the fjord. http://i.imgur.com/o21VADA.jpg for full size.

First stop on our trip was to a developing heritage/tourism project a little ways outside of the town. There was a community house type of a project with arts and crafts, centered around the viking heritage of Iceland and the fjord. Currently there were local handicrafts for sale, tapestry weaving where visitors could participate, and plays on the Icelandic Sagas (Gísla Saga Súrssonar specifically). In the future they were planning to expand by potentially building a themed viking camp and collect a sort of a tiny museum of viking themed objects to display.

Tapestry on the works.

Jewelry made out of puffin beaks, cod bones and fish leather.

Smallsword made by the local blacksmith. Fish leather handle with cast bronze guard and pommel.

Various items on show.

It was interesting to see a project such as this at the very early stages, and would be great to come visit again in a couple of years to see how things have progressed.

Next we visited the þingeyri elementary school, whose students come work at the Fab Lab Ísafjörður weekly, to have a look at their workspaces and projects.

It was wonderful to see how much emphasis on handicrafts and art even the basic elementary schools here have, and you could see examples of what the students had created all over the school. The views out of the workshops were pretty inspirational, too.

At the town center we came across a mural painted by an American artist who had done an arts residency at Westfjords a while back. This is apparently how the locals sounded to them.

After a lunch at the local gas station we went to visit our main target, the old blacksmithing shop of Guðm. J. Sigurðsson & Co h.f. that has been in operation since 1913!

Read all about it after the break! (and also the Finnish abstract.)

Flags and Handicraft in Ísafjörður pt. II

Hallo!

A few more pictures of Skóbúdin, and then a little bit talk about an open house community day we held at Fab Lab Ísafjörður over the last weekend.

A wall filled with stories from people around the Westfjords.

Each book held a photograph, and a small story related to the photograph from the person whose album the photo was taken from.

I don't have the picture related to this one, but this memory was so touching I wanted to just add it nonetheless.

At first I thought these looked like splatters of blood. Or maybe islands. The artwork spread across the entire wall is titled Period Piece. I was correct the first time!

Skóbúdin is a very charming little shop, with plenty of art and works from local artists. Definitely worth a visit when you drop by Ísafjörður!

Towards the end of the week we started preparing for a textile and metal themed community event at the Lab. The idea was to think how we might combine metal and textile handicrafts, the traditional methods, and newer digital technologies. And to discuss the subject with people interested in visiting, and in general to show what you might be able to do at the Fab Lab.

We did extensive tests on various fabrics, leather and other material we had at hand, and in the end decided to use a feather pattern created on Inkscape to illustrate prototypes of potential end products, from print style jewelry to earrings, to maybe even woolen pillowcases if you just really love that smell of burnt sheep in the morning! (I may be kidding about the last example. But really, laser cut wool smells absolutely terrible. And leather as well.)

The pattern with initial cardboard testing, and then a leather model.

Laser cutting more fabric tests.

Variation in plexiglass earring style.

At some point we even had time for a break! We visited the harbour, popped by a fish shop for some super fresh fish (they were just packing some for delivery to elsewhere) that tasted excellent, and some fish leather for Johanna.

Example shot of our Board of Examples. Exampleception!

Community day in action!

 Stay tuned for more! (ja suomea breikin jälkeen!)

Here be Finnish ->

Flags and handicraft in Ísafjörður

During our stay we visited in many interesting places. Because of our textile background we were very happy to see places like the local flag factory called Fánasmidjan and Ívaf´s work studio.

Fánasmidjan factory produces for example flags and banners for companies with screen printing technique and digital printing. We got to see the manufacturing process and it was really intresting for us to see that they make it just as we make silk screen printing on a smaller scale. 

Screen printing machine. The largest in Iceland.

Drying the fabric.

Fánasmidjan is very keen on recycling their leftover material and they are co-working with local artisan and finding a solution to fully use all the materials.

Leftover material

Bags made out of  flagmaterial.

Digital printer.

Colour mixer.

Stickers for the local sports team.

Mini flags. http://www.fanar.is/

After the flag factory we went to this beautiful little shop called Skóbúdin. They sell local design and handcrafted products.

 

Skóbúdin

Björg´s artwork

Flagbags made out of  Fanasmidjan´s leftover material.
https://www.facebook.com/museum.mundane/

The last place we went was Siggas work studio that was located just upstairs of Skóbúdin. She has been into knitting for many years, but just a few years ago she got her first knitting machine and got totally hooked on it. She now has like four different knitting machines and does all her work with them. She has a unique way of using colours and patterns and her work is well designed. We got extremely inspired by her work :)

Yarns.

Knitting machine

Seaming machine.

Ìvaf´s design. http://ivafhandcrafted.is/#ivaf1

Fishing. With lasers!

The dottirs have landed! This week all of the Finns are up in Westfjords. The schedule has partly consisted of exploring the town, in addition to learning more about digital design at Fab Lab Ísafjördur. On Monday we got to see the final preparations of a new fishing technology, before it did its maiden voyage to the sea. People from the Innovation Center Iceland were hard at work with the fishers to get this thing on the road. Er. Wave?

In addition to the mountain, you may see the other Finns in the photo. Johanna right from the centre in the black coat, Sanna in purple, and Pekka to the far right. Myself as the shadow taking the picture.

The metal rig is fitted with metal tubes housing lasers all around, all of those have microprocessors, which in turn connect to a larger unit that has the energy source and a bigger computer, which connects to yet another computer running the whole show.

The green trawling net at the back is connected to the rig, and the theory is that the lasers at the edges create a funnel that will guide the fish to swim towards the centre of the appliance and into the net.

They left for a 12 hour testing trip the next day, but we still haven't heard the results. It was very cool and exciting though! If the technology works, it would hopefully enable a more environmentally conscious way to trawl for the fish. Having less weight dragging behind the boat should diminish the oil usage, while guiding the fish with lasers would take away the need to drag the huge nets along the bottom of the sea disturbing the ocean floor.

Next we went for an introductory tour of the local university building, Vestri HF.
Amongst others, the local office for Innovation Center Iceland, and Avalanche research center are located in the building. Plenty of artwork on the walls as well, which is always nice! And there were some super interesting creatures around the marine biology department's office!

A spiny fellow.

Is it an onion with teeth? No, it's an anglerfish!

And this concludes our report from the fjord pelted by rogue winds from the hurricane Nicole. Over and out (with Finnish after the break!)

-Antti, Johanna and Sanna-

Suomea alla:

Walks and More Walks. And a box! And tailoring stuff!

Hi again!

So, first a bit of Finnish, after which I'll swap back to English.

Muutama päivä sitten kävimme pikavisiitillä paikallisella räätälillä. Ensi viikoksi Reykjavikin suomalaisvahvistus saapuu tänne Isafjörduriin (tai ovat juuri matkalla itseasiassa) ja heitä varten kävimme hakemassa lainaan (hemmetin painavan teollisuus)ompelukoneen. Ensi viikolle on myös sovittu pidempi vierailu kyseiseen paikkaan.

Eli mikäli tänne joskus tulee vaihtoon tekstiili/vaatetuspuolelta, on yhteistyötaho valmiina jo :) Alla kuvat räätälipaikan yhdestä työtilasta, sekä ompelukoneesta Fab Labiin toimitettuna.

Oli muuten viihtyisä räätälinliike! Rakennus 1920-luvulta ja hieno kohokuvioitu katto, puiset seinät ja lattiat, seinältä bongasin ainakin Leonard Cohenin kuvan ja taustalla soi lisäksi hyvä musa :)

And back to English!

This week I mostly worked on figuring out snap fit, boxes and perfecting my laser cutting skills. I really could've benefited from like, Offset for Dummies, since I just kept messing that up a lot. Oh hey! Another wrong line deleted....

Here's a few unsuccessful attempts (Or actually I think those plexiglass boxes were a success actually, just could've used a looser offset because the fragile material cracked when trying to fit the overly tight pieces together), and a couple of offsetting tests on an oncoming Turner's-ish-cube project.

This one was almost a success! Just didn't place the material well onto the cutter so the top piece didn't come out complete. And the corners are missing a little bit of material. Er. So. Not a success.

Cracks all around.

Them tests. 0.1 offset is perfect for 4 mm mdf!

And I finally managed to make the perfect lidless box, with some plexiglass inlay! I am so damn proud of myself!

After a long week of snap fitting, I went for two hikes on the weekend. On Saturday a less taxing stroll along the side of the mountain by the town here, with an avalanche expert and a landslide expert along, who talked about the science behind both phenomena. It was mostly in Icelandic, but we got some translated by Thorarinn, and also asked a few questions about it in English afterwards with Viviana, who was also along for the walk.

At the end of the walk we got a really good seafood lunch and some delicious coffee brewed over open fire. Both prepared with Finnish Muurikka equipment!

Read more about it (and see the photos!) after the break: