Andrew (R.S Admin) @ajroach42@retro.social

Hey folks, how's your week treating you?

@68km if you don't mind, that would be awesome. I'll dm you my address and you can tell me how to pay you

@vfrmedia @enkiv2 that's basically what I want to reproduce. A spirit duplicator without aniline dyes or solvents.

@enkiv2 @zardoz mimeographs use some nasty chemicals too, analine dyes and solvents. Better than photographic reproduction though.

@68km That's super neat! I knew the series existed, but I've never seen any in the wild.

@enkiv2 Or I guess I could use the dotmatrix printer to poke holes in a waxed paper, a la ditto machine...

@enkiv2 @zardoz@cybre.spac It was a linotype style device that led me down this road. Specifically the Matel linoprinter toy, which used a reverse embossing label maker to make lines for a lintotype style machine. It was really neat.

I feel like there's a way to replicate that kind of a device using modern technology. A dot matrix printer or a daisy wheel printer is like half way there already.

If I could use a dot matrix printer to stamp an embossing plastic sheet....

@bentosmile That's really the trick to getting things to look nice. My fancy chopper was like $200 or so, but it's perfect.

@enkiv2 @zardoz My understanding is that xerography would be about as energy intensive as laser printing. My goal is not only to do it cheap, but to use less power.

A CNC mill could probably be used to prep a plate, but ... I dunno. I'd have to try it, but my gut says the results wouldn't be great.

@bentosmile My favorite method is basically to use some binding brads or heavy duty staples in conjunction with a thick cover stock and the glue binder. That produces the most durable results.

But mostly, I just use the glue binder. It works well enough.

@bentosmile Book binding isn't super tricky.

I've done it a few ways to varying results. I mostly print books on a laser printer though, and while it's cheap, it is super inefficient in terms of energy use.

For binding, right now I use an off the shelf glue binder, which cost about $75. In the past, I've used brushed on glue, sewing, a drill press and thread, and heavy duty staples.

@zardoz So that's why.

@zardoz I don't know of any at home offset presses, or machines for preparing plates.

I have been thinking a lot about the linoprinter toy I saw this weekend, and about offset printing preparation and offset printing in general as distinct from digital printing and as a method of reliably and quickly generating lots of copies of a piece of literature.

The more I think about it, the more I want to see a reliable home offset printing press come out of the maker movement.

Analog Tools are sometimes the right tools for the job.

@enkiv2 I'll share some examples once I figure out my audio sync issues and let you see what I mean.

@paul optical sound! It's a projector. Needs a bulb to produce audio.

@oz As soon as they are done rendering.

@enkiv2 I'm taking kinoscopes of TV broadcasts, which were made by pointing a film camera at a TV screen while a live broadcast was being made, and converting them to 24 FPS progressive frame video files.

This looks okay.

What I'm suggesting is that I then filter that to a 30FPS interlaced file, or leave it as a progressive file and just add in some artificial scan lines.

I have a question about my #FilmPreserveationProject

I find that these old shows look Much better with scanlines added.

I'm planning on sticking a scanlined version and a non-scanlined version on archive.org, but I think I'm just going to stick the scanline version on peertube.

Thoughts?