There’s an old joke about inviting somebody up to your dorm room to ‘look at your etchings’ — but if you’re going to do that, you’d best have some etchings, lest they call your bluff. Even better would be to have prints available, so you might share your hard work with adoring fans. Over on YouTube, [This Designed That] shows building the perfect little etching press so you need never invite anyone to your room again: you can crank out enough prints on this bad boy to hand out your etchings on a street corner!
Crank is the right word, because it’s hand-cranked, with the rollers chain-driven off a separate driveshaft. It works like, well, a roller press: two steel rollers squeeze a platen holding your inked etching and a of paper together to put an image onto. His choice of an off-cut of steel pipe to use as the top roller is inspired, even if he did have to turn it down quite a bit to get an even radius and smooth surface finish. The whole thing is very well made, and all of it hand-machined except for off-the-shelf bearings and the yellow side plates, which were commercially CNC’d.
We also appreciate that [This Designed That] took the time to prove the merit of his machine by showing the press in work, and the resulting prints. We’re not art critics, but we are willing to say this makes a good impression.
[This Designed That] is both printer and machinist, and we’ve seen his print projects before, like using resin prints for foil stamping or a DIY proofing press that seems to share some DNA with this larger project.
Thanks to [Paul Manwaring] for the tip!