I decided to post this project that I recently made for a friend to show you some of the possibilities of using a photoresist stencil. If you don’t know about the photoresist, it’s a light sensitive sheet of resist material used to create a stencil. A black pattern is placed over the photoresist and exposed to light. Then the blocked area or black pattern that we placed over the resist will be washed away and etched.
The huge benefit to using these is that it can be used for very fine details. In the photo below, I used one to create a stencil for a poem. The poem was 12 lines long with spaced paragraphs, and I did this for the glass that only gave me about 2.5 inches of room tall. This shows you how fine they can go, and it can do a lot more impressive things with half tones which I will discuss later.
Most of the items that I etched were done using the vinyl cutter, and they can create fairly fine details, as well. Just to show you that the vinyl cutter can do fine work as well, I etched the other side of the glass with a stencil made from my cutter. You can see that this isn’t so bad either.
How fine your machine will cut depends on the cutter itself. I found out that my cutter worked best when cutting on thinner vinyl. Cutting some of the thicker resists with fine detail were a challenge at times.
So there you have it- If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below.
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Oh, sorry for the blurry pictures everyone. My camera lens must not have been clean.
Thanks for sharing I need to try this what size phont did you use?
Katherine
Hi Katherine, thats a good question. I think it might have been about 12 or 14 size font.
I tried to find a font that was thicker without being too large. Thanks
Is the photoresist equipment expensive, Eric?
that is neat , i am going to have to give it a try just one more thing the cutter can do with some glass etching, the picture made the point
Jackie, it’ll cost you a few hundreds for a kit but there’s not really much to it but a UV light. You can go the cheap route and make your own light box and an inexpensive UV light not sold specifically for making stencil to save a lot.
Then you would just need to get the photoresist film and transparent film.
While I would love to get into sandblasting right at this moment I feel that the photo-resist will be fine for now. I have stumbled across a kit for $170.00 on glass-etching-kits.com. Do you have any feel if this is a reputable firm or not? Your comments will be much appreciated.
Sue, I have bought stuff through there and I didn’t have a problem with them. So I think they are okay.
Hi Eric I like to know more about photoresist and transparent film. I have never used it Is it faster also acurate Give me a price ,Store, and do they ship to canada I am looking for the complete equipment thanks William
William, the photoresist is nice and accurate. The comment you left on our Facebook page with the photo was the result of halftone photoresist stencil work. I’ll try to put out more information or a tutorial about it within the next few weeks (maybe months!?!?) when I find some time.
I honestly think a stencil cutter is faster and less of a hassle (which I wrote about in my ebook)- but it depends on how much detail is in the pattern. A place known as Ikonics Imaging/ Photoabrasive has a photoresist that doesn’t require a water washout so that probably is faster.
The two main places in North America are Photoabrasive and Rayzist but I recommend Photobrasive because they are very nice people & have better film.
Thanks Eric for the speedy repley i will contact that Firm and let you know how i made out
Please can you give me photoabrasive’s web site
many thanks
Peter
The job I asked Dan to do for me was very small. I really dtobued I could find anyone to bother with etching one signature on a small piece of mirror. It was done within a couple of hours and the price was more than fair. I will definitely be using this service again.Shanny L.
@ Shanny, what Dan are you referring to?
I am interested in learning more about vinyl cutter. How much does one cost and where would I look for buying one?