Block printing in the school

Bibliography: p. 43.

A la llum de les matrius: projecte d'exposició temporal

El treball presenta el projecte d'una exposició temporal al Museu d'Art sobre el fons de xilografies procedents de la Impremta Carreras

Silk purse, sow’s ear : transforming second-Hand clothing into luxury fashion through craft practice

There is more apparel being created than ever before in history. The unsustainable production of materials and the clothing and textile waste that contributes annually to landfill, an estimated 500 000 tonnes of clothing per year in the UK (Gray, 2012) are significant issues inspiring the practice of Australian fashion designers, Carla van Lunn and Carla Binotto. While the contemporary fashion industry is built upon a production and consumption model that is younger than the industrial revolution, the traditions of costume, craft, and bodily adornment are ancient practices. Binotto and van Lunn believe that the potential for sustainable fashion practice lies outside the current industrial manufacturing model. This case study will discuss their fashion label, Maison Briz Vegas, and examine how recycling and traditional craft practices can be used to address the problem of clothing waste and offer an alternative idea of value in fashion and materials, addressing the indicative conference theme, Craft as Sustainability Activism in Practice. “Maison Briz Vegas”, a play on the notion of French luxury and the designers’ new world and sub-tropical home town, Brisbane, is an experimental and craft-based fashion label that uses second-hand cotton T-shirts and wool sweaters as primary materials to create designer fashion. The first collection, titled “The Wasteland”, was conceived and created in Paris in 2011, where designer Carla van Lunn had been living and working for several years. The collection was inspired by the precariousness of the global economy and concerns about climate change. The mountains of discarded clothing found at flea markets provided a textile resource from which van Lunn created a recycled hand-crafted fashion collection with an activist message and was shown to buyers and press during Paris Fashion Week. The label has since become a collaboration with fellow Australian designer Carla Binotto. The craft processes employed in Maison Briz Vegas’ up-cycled fashion collections include original hand block-printing, hand embroidery, quilting and patchwork. Taking an artisanal and slow approach, the designers work to create a hand touched imperfect style in a fashion market flooded with digital printing and fast mass-produced garments. The recycling extends to garment fastenings and embellishments, with discarded jar lids and bottle tops being used as buttons and within embroidery. This process transforms the material and aesthetic value of cheap and generic second-hand clothing and household waste. Maison Briz Vegas demonstrates the potential for craft and design to be an interface for environmental activism within the world of fashion. Presenting garments that are both high-design and thoughtfully recycled in a significant fashion context, such as Paris Fashion Week, Maison Briz Vegas has been able to engage a high-profile luxury fashion audience which has not traditionally considered sustainable or eco practices as relevant or desirable in themselves. The designers are studying how to apply their production model on a greater scale in order to fill commercial orders and reach a wider audience whilst maintaining the element of bespoke, limited edition, and slow hand-craft within their work.

The booke of the Pylgremage of the Sowle,

The editor is indebted to friends for facsimiles of the drawings which have been copied from the originals, and lithographed by Mr. Vincent Brooks. Those in colour being from the illuminated ms. translation in the British museum (Egerton 615), and those in block printing from the prose French edition of the "Pylgremage of the Sowle", printed by Verard, at Paris, in 1499.

Halftone printing block portrait of Werner Cahnman Portraits

This block was used in the printing of "Who's Who in American Education"

Halftone printing block portrait of Gisella Levi Cahnman Portraits

This block was used in the printing of "Who's Who in American Education"

Fabrication of arrays of silver nanoparticle aggregates by microcontact printing and block copolymer nanoreactors

A combination of microcontact printing and block copolymer nanoreactors succeeded in fabricating arrays of silver nanoparticle aggregates. A complex solution of polystyrene-block-poly(4-vinylpyridine) micelles and silver salt was used as an ink to form thin films or droplets on polydimethylsiloxane stamp protrusions. After these complex aggregates were printed onto silicon substrates under controlled conditions, highly ordered arrays of disklike, dishlike, and dotlike complex aggregates were obtained. A Subsequent oxygen reactive ion etching treatment yielded arrays of silver nanoparticle aggregates.

Evidence of print gap airflow affecting web printing quality

The current study extends our earlier investigation on the real-time dynamics of print gap airflow around a single jetted drop over a moving substrate. In the present work, simulated web press printing was performed using a stationary grey-scale commercial inkjet print head to print full-width block of solid colour images onto a paper substrate with extended print gaps. The resultant printed images exhibit patterns or 'wood-graining' effects which become more prevalent as the relevant Reynolds number (Re) increases. The high-resolution scans of the printed images revealed that the patterns are created by oscillation and coalescence of neighboring printed tracks across the web. The phenomenon could be a result of drop stream perturbations caused by unsteady print gap airflow of the type similar to that observed in the previous study. ©2013; Society for Imaging Science and Technology.

Synthesis, thermal processing, and thin film morphology of poly(3-hexylthiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate) block copolymers

A series of novel block copolymers, processable from single organic solvents and subsequently rendered amphiphilic by thermolysis, have been synthesized using Grignard metathesis (GRIM) and reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerizations and azide-alkyne click chemistry. This chemistry is simple and allows the fabrication of well-defined block copolymers with controllable block lengths. The block copolymers, designed for use as interfacial adhesive layers in organic photovoltaics to enhance contact between the photoactive and hole transport layers, comprise printable poly(3-hexylthiophene)-block-poly(neopentyl p-styrenesulfonate), P3HT-b-PNSS. Subsequently, they are converted to P3HT-b-poly(p-styrenesulfonate), P3HT-b-PSS, following deposition and thermal treatment at 150 °C. Grazing incidence small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS/GIWAXS) revealed that thin films of the amphiphilic block copolymers comprise lamellar nanodomains of P3HT crystallites that can be pushed further apart by increasing the PSS block lengths. The approach of using a thermally modifiable block allows deposition of this copolymer from a single organic solvent and subsequent conversion to an amphiphilic layer by nonchemical means, particularly attractive to large scale roll-to-roll industrial printing processes.

Advanced Applications of 3D Dosimetry and 3D Printing in Radiation Therapy

As complex radiotherapy techniques become more readily-practiced, comprehensive 3D dosimetry is a growing necessity for advanced quality assurance. However, clinical implementation has been impeded by a wide variety of factors, including the expense of dedicated optical dosimeter readout tools, high operational costs, and the overall difficulty of use. To address these issues, a novel dry-tank optical CT scanner was designed for PRESAGE 3D dosimeter readout, relying on 3D printed components and omitting costly parts from preceding optical scanners. This work details the design, prototyping, and basic commissioning of the Duke Integrated-lens Optical Scanner (DIOS).

The convex scanning geometry was designed in ScanSim, an in-house Monte Carlo optical ray-tracing simulation. ScanSim parameters were used to build a 3D rendering of a convex ‘solid tank’ for optical-CT, which is capable of collimating a point light source into telecentric geometry without significant quantities of refractive-index matched fluid. The model was 3D printed, processed, and converted into a negative mold via rubber casting to produce a transparent polyurethane scanning tank. The DIOS was assembled with the solid tank, a 3W red LED light source, a computer-controlled rotation stage, and a 12-bit CCD camera. Initial optical phantom studies show negligible spatial inaccuracies in 2D projection images and 3D tomographic reconstructions. A PRESAGE 3D dose measurement for a 4-field box treatment plan from Eclipse shows 95% of voxels passing gamma analysis at 3%/3mm criteria. Gamma analysis between tomographic images of the same dosimeter in the DIOS and DLOS systems show 93.1% agreement at 5%/1mm criteria. From this initial study, the DIOS has demonstrated promise as an economically-viable optical-CT scanner. However, further improvements will be necessary to fully develop this system into an accurate and reliable tool for advanced QA.

Pre-clinical animal studies are used as a conventional means of translational research, as a midpoint between in-vitro cell studies and clinical implementation. However, modern small animal radiotherapy platforms are primitive in comparison with conventional linear accelerators. This work also investigates a series of 3D printed tools to expand the treatment capabilities of the X-RAD 225Cx orthovoltage irradiator, and applies them to a feasibility study of hippocampal avoidance in rodent whole-brain radiotherapy.

As an alternative material to lead, a novel 3D-printable tungsten-composite ABS plastic, GMASS, was tested to create precisely-shaped blocks. Film studies show virtually all primary radiation at 225 kVp can be attenuated by GMASS blocks of 0.5cm thickness. A state-of-the-art software, BlockGen, was used to create custom hippocampus-shaped blocks from medical image data, for any possible axial treatment field arrangement. A custom 3D printed bite block was developed to immobilize and position a supine rat for optimal hippocampal conformity. An immobilized rat CT with digitally-inserted blocks was imported into the SmART-Plan Monte-Carlo simulation software to determine the optimal beam arrangement. Protocols with 4 and 7 equally-spaced fields were considered as viable treatment options, featuring improved hippocampal conformity and whole-brain coverage when compared to prior lateral-opposed protocols. Custom rodent-morphic PRESAGE dosimeters were developed to accurately reflect these treatment scenarios, and a 3D dosimetry study was performed to confirm the SmART-Plan simulations. Measured doses indicate significant hippocampal sparing and moderate whole-brain coverage.

Electrical characterization of electronic circuits produced by inkjet printing

Dissertação de Mestrado, Engenharia Electrónica e Telecomunicações, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade do Algarve, 2014