https://imgur.com/a/oGgJsQq (Photos)
So firstly I'll explain the photos then the process.
The molotov cocktail was basic PLA. The ink was printed on printer paper with speedball fabric block ink.
The cat stamp. There are 3 versions. The small one (with a missing line on the teeth) was tpu glued to pla backing.
I tried both stamp ink (teal) and speedball ink (black).
The two larger ones printed in lime green are both PLA. I just tried one with ironing on and ironing off and slightly adjusted the design to remove smooth edges because traditional lino carving has sharper edges on the positive parts.
Okay so now I'll explain my method.
I sketched both design ideas on paper and scanned them. I then used Adobe illustrator to make a vector drawing.
I imported into Blender but the vector was all messed up. Artifacts and such.
So I went back to illustrator. Exported the vector image as a png file. Loaded that into a vector tracer program. Had a new vector svg file made.
Loaded that into blender. That worked. Extruded (as a curve object). Then converted to mesh object.
The molotov needed additional work to prepare for printing. I used Photoshop to help divide and make masks for the areas that would be printed with different colors. Determined the appropriate order.
Decided to print them all with the same size backplate for easy positioning.
When I imported the svg files into Blender and made the "stamp" I added ovals to the ends of the plates with excess negative space to make them balanced when pressing down on the paper.
Mounted to a surface. Oval for cats. Rectangle for molotov.
I made it so the extruded pattern was 2mm thick and the bottom 1mm for the TPU print (one of the cats) and 1.5mm-2mm thick for the full PLA prints. (Ish). I can't remember the exact thicknesses.
Total thickness for molotov (full PLA) was ~3.5mm.
The one cat I printed in TPU (95a) was glued to an oval of PLA for support.
All 3d prints were solid. No infill. 3 walls. Both for pla and tpu.
All surfaces of the stamp / linocut were sanded. The regular PLA sanded down easy with 220m The TPU was harder to smooth. I used 100 to start with and it still took forever. And then a little with 220 once I was satisfied.
As mentioned, I tried both stamp ink and block printing ink on the cats.
Usually with linocut printing the paper goes on to the stamp/block/linocut, but I did this old school stamp style. Putting the stamp on the paper and pressing down. I used a hard brayer to help with this part.
For the molotov, I used a pencil to trace a rectangle on the paper and used this as a guide to position the stamp plate from each color. I also let each color dry for 2 hours between them.
It seemed like the block ink looked considerably better on the TPU (the tooth missing cat stamp) but I also did make another TPU print of a different design (not in photos) and the quality was not better with the TPU for block ink (speedball). So I no longer am experimenting with it. Though I do plan to try Petg since it's more flexible than pla.
TPU is better with stamp ink than PLA but I'm not planning on using stamp ink. That was just to see if it worked. But if that's what you plan to use, make the stamps out of TPU.
The speedball inks aren't the best but I only use my good expensive inks on "prints".
So you will notice the quality isn't super great. Plus my old blue was nearly dried up.
The black usually prints decent but didn't look great on the molotov.
Anyway. I think that's all the details.
I have experience in the arts and do make actual linocut prints. So I already had all of those tools and some printing ink.
I think there are limits on 3d printing linocut designs. But honestly it was considerably less time than making real ones. And since I made uniform rectangles for the molotov , I was able to get pretty good alignment without a bunch of additional work that is usually required for multicolor prints.
I do have a rolling press, and I'm sure I could get better results with that.
I'd also like to try 3d printing the designs in a smaller nozzle for better detail.