Screen Printing!

I'm going to apologize in advance for the quality of the photos on this post---I was working quickly and with hands covered in stuff so I used my phone, and now I'm working on a sloooooow computer and so i'm forgoing editing!

For this project I'm starting with these instructions.  For the most part they worked fine, though there were once again a few things that were a little unclear.  Also I fudged some things to keep it cheap.

FIRSTLY:  I started out using the directions to make a screen with embroidery hoops and mesh fabric.  The instructions just say to buy mesh fabric, but when you get to the fabric store you'll see that there are a LOT OF OPTIONS.  I ended up purchasing something that was pretty much what you'd use for window sheers, and that worked OK.  If you could find something finer it would probably be better--there were some problems with too much ink getting through the screen and making things a little gloppy.

See? It works, but my attempts that did anything finer than a basic shape didn't come out very well.

While I was searching our supply closet for tote bags to practice on, I found an entire tub of printing supplies.  No one here has any idea where they came from or who bought them, but the tub included a bunch of pre stretched silk hoops!  Very similar to these: http://www.dickblick.com/items/63005-1003/

I decided to give those a try, and WOAH, way less hassle.  A little pricey, but the embroidery hoops were too.  I'll probably let the teens make one of each.

Step 1: decide what you want to make.  I made stencils with our diecuts and had some success with those, but of all my practice attempts (4 total), the freehand drawing turned out the best.

Here's my mysterious hoop of unknown provenance.  Where did you come from, hoop?

My narwhal went through a few different facial expressions before I got his essence right.  The drawing is on a piece of paper under the hoop.  NOW.  If your hoop has a bit of a lip to it, you want to put down the hoop in such a way that it is raised up a little.  Like, if it were a very shallow cup, you'd be putting it top down.  Is this making sense? Ok good.  Now you'll use your screen drawing fluid to drawn on your design.  IMPORTANT! You are drawing your design BACKWARDS. Mostly this isn't going to matter, but it will matter if you're using any letters. LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES.

Here he is!

I cheated and did the lettering lightly on the wrong side of the screen, and then covered it from the correct side.  That worked out fine.

This is the BACK of the screen.  See how you can see the lip there?

Let it dry completely. This will take a few hours unless you want to bust out a hairdryer.  I left it overnight.  When it's dry, cover the whole thing (on the same side you put the drawing fluid on) with your screen filler.  It needs to be thick enough that all the holes are plugged, but be careful not to get too much on the drawing fluid or it runs a little. I didn't manage to get a photo of this step.  I used a piece of cardboard to spread it around, which worked fine--though try not to leave any streaks--aim for a nice even layer.

Let it dry again.  I'm doing this with the teens as a two part program--one day they will make the screens (we'll dry the drawing fluid with a hairdryer and then let the filler set overnight) and the second day they'll do the actual printing.  After your filler is dry (overnight), rinse the screen under cold water.  The drawing fluid magically rinses out, leaving just the screen filler.  On the real silk screens it did leave a bit of blue dye behind.

The rinsed screen! I will do this for the teens in the days between programs.  Make sure the water isn't hot--cold was best for me. Once it's dry, you're ready to print! Yay!

To print:

If you're printing on a bag or t-shirt, make sure to put some cardboard or paper inside so the ink doesn't leak through to the back.  Put your screen where you want it, this time so that it lays FLAT and the lip faces up. Glop a bit of your printing ink at the top, and pull it downward.  I'm trying to keep things cheap, so I used a pink rubber eraser instead of buying an expensive rubber squeegee, and it totally worked great. Be wary of using TOO MUCH ink, or it will seep outside the lines of your drawing.

 

Here's the back of my inky screen...

and here's the front.  You can rinse the ink out afterward, though I haven't tried re-using it yet.

And here's my amazing shirt! There are a couple of areas where it could have used a little more ink, but that just makes it look screen-printed, to me.

Shirts were on sale 4 for $10 at Michels, so I grabbed a few to practice on.  For the program, the teens are bringing their own shirts or whatever to print on.

Overall I think this will go pretty well with the teens, but I'm glad I gave myself plenty of time to practice! 

Teen Tech Project #1 : Solar Bugs

For the past few years, library makerspaces have become quite The Thing.  Unfortunately we don't all have the space, staff, or $$ that it takes to set something like that up as a permanent thing.   Starting with the current round of programming (we divide the year up into 3 newsletters, and plan things far in advance so that we can get them printed and out to residents), I'm doing at least one Teen Tech Project every time.  This was my first, and required a bit of self education.  I've never messed with electronics and things like that, but I'm glad to be learning!  For this project I had to learn to solder, which was very easy.

This is the project we did. Once again I found myself in a position where the instructions are written assuming a certain amount of prior knowledge that I didn't have.  For example, at one point it says you need "Scrap Wire...they can be anything".  Now, I know enough to know that PROBABLY there are at least a few things that wouldn't work.  But I don't know enough to know the difference between something that obviously WILL or obviously WON'T work.  So I'm going to break it down for you here in excruciating detail.

What You Need:

To make the Solar Bug function:

2v Solar Cells 
It looks like the seller I bought from doesn't have anymore, but the description should help you.  There aren't a lot of non-shady places to get these, most people I talked to said to use e-bay. I lucked out that this seller had them on Amazon.
Tiny Motors
Soldering iron and Solder (Ask your IT and facilities departments, they probably have these!)
Wire Cutters (again, IT and facilities)
Wire to connect the Motor to the Solar Cell (link goes to what I used, which is what he used in his instructions.  If you have a better knowledge of what counts as useable "scrap wire", use what you like!)

To make the solar bug into a creature:

Big paper clips, cut down with wire snips
Hot glue gun and glue sticks

totally optional:

Pipe Cleaners
Googly Eyes
Tiny Bells
Anything else you may want to add--though keep in mind you have to keep the solar panel uncovered!

 The Process:

Decide how much soldering you want the teens to do.  I decided "just a little" and so I did the first bit myself and had them do the less fiddly bit.

There exists a tool called a "helping hand" and if you have one, they look like they would be super helpful.  If you don't, you can totally rig a system of binder clips.  The first step is to solder your "scrap wire" or resistor (snip it apart from the thing in the middle so you have two plain wire pieces) to the motor. 

The quick-and-dirty of soldering is that you want to hold the hot tip of the soldering iron to your wire near where you want to solder two things together.  The heat will travel down the wire---you are NOT touching the solder to the soldering iron!  After 10-20 seconds, touch your solder to the wire, keeping the iron in place.  Does the solder melt? Great! Goop that all in there to hold things together.  If it doesn't, give it a few more seconds. It's important to keep contact between the iron and the wire, or else it will cool off and you start over.

Here's how I held things steady.  My first attempt included a clip torn from an old conference badge.

Both sides are in place and soldered!

I did this step for all of the motors, and then assembled kits for each teen that had all the basic parts:

Then the teens bent the wires so that they would touch the contact points of the solar cell (not seen above...they're on the underside).  We used binder clips for this too, along the long edge of the cell leaving plenty of wire exposed. Then you can lift the motor up a bit so that it has a little more room to turn. 

There you go!  At this point, take it outside to see if it works!  You will definitely know if it does.  I found that we needed direct, outdoor sunlight to make them go.

To make it into a jiggly creature, unbend the paperclip wire into legs and hot glue them to the bottom.  After that it's all a matter of personal taste.  This is my little practice bug:

He looks depressed. Probably wishes he were dancing!

From the side.

Here's a link to a video of mine moving

I liked adding googly eyes and bells because they add some movement and noise.  Some of my teens added things to the spinning part of the motor, so that their bots would have a tails that twirled!  So cute!  Here are some photos of their projects:

Duct Tape

When I presented at MLA last year, my co-presenter and I called it "Beyond Duct Tape: Programming for Today's Teens".   Really though, I have no beef with duct tape.  It remains a staple in my programming wheelhouse--a sentence that I'm not sure makes sense and which also makes me want to slap myself in the face.  ANYWAY!

I've found that teens need a lot more instruction than you would expect them to.  I always hope that they will just play and create and end up with awesome stuff, but their imaginations just don't seem to go that way.  I usually provide them with samples and instructions for roses and wallets, and this time around I had put in the newsletter that they could bring a t-shirt if they wanted to make a t-shirt bag.

While we did have a couple of reluctant ladies who I don't think ended up making anything other than a bit of a mess, most of the teens came well prepared this time around.  I'd only allocated an hour--next time I'll make it two.  They weren't ready to leave!  I let them stay over for about half an hour, but I had tickets to that night's Tiger's game so I had to kick them out eventually.

Lots of the instructions that I have used before haven't been detailed enough for teens who haven't done these kinds of projects before, so I drew my own.  Please admire my awesome skillz!