I saw the headline and immediately thought "silk screen"
We learned how to do it in 8th grade in shop class. The end result was a T-shirt or other item that we printed from the screens we made. We cut our screens manually with an Xacto knife, but also learned about photo emulsion screens.
> What you’re seeing there, isn’t a giant sticker being applied.
I thought it worth mentioning that stickers were in the mix too. In the town I grew up in, there was a printing company that made them for Atari. I recall being brought to a "local industry expo" event as a kid, and I have a vivid memory of seeing heavy-duty vinyl (?) stickers for "Pole Position" at this company's stand. They would have been designed to be applied to the marquees and control panels of the upright cabinet.
It really does depend on the thickness of the photo emulsion and the print ink. I've done silk screen prints where 20 prints were managed with little detail loss. The thing with the silk screens is that as a woven cloth, it's prone to slightly stretching with each pass of the ink, so the emulsion gets thin in spots rather quickly.
I would imagine that on the big industrial printers that are using a metal mesh screen and thicker emulsion, it's maybe closer to 50? Usually in a print shop doing a big run, there'll be four or five screens made for each print layer so when one gets worn, it's replaced in the printing rack. It really is an artform.
This seems very low. I have not worked in professional screenprinting environments, but all resources I have seen indicate potential for hundreds or thousands of high quality prints from a well prepared screen.
It can be, when the video is worth while. The embedded video here isn't what I'd call worth while. Someone shot a lot of video but not video that shows the process in detail. There's equal footage of closeups of 80s mustaches as the process. They are impressive 'staches though
Did you think I didn't watch it? It just shows the ink being applied. It does not show how the screens were made. It doesn't show how the screens are aligned. It shows a guy with a glorious mustache swapping screens, but cuts to a close up of said 'stache while the new screen is being installed. So, no, not as much as one would need.
Yes, screen printing, but there's more to it than those two words!
And the video in the post was sourced and uploaded by...the blog post author.
Also, let's be serious, that blog has been writing about arcade related things for over a decade https://arcadeblogger.com/2013/04/01/1814065/ and running a podcast since 2020, and the author wrote a book in 2020.
One could say he puts real effort into all this, you know?
If you star changing the term slop into meaning content someone made that you don't like, you begin to diminish the word, and also who are you to categorically dismiss a stranger's work for someone else? Not good form.
TLDR implies you didn’t read - therefore you don’t know if it’s slop.
But seriously it does read well like normal thoughtful human writing, so I am on the side of it not being “AI slop” while also noting that you didn’t claim it was.
I saw the headline and immediately thought "silk screen"
We learned how to do it in 8th grade in shop class. The end result was a T-shirt or other item that we printed from the screens we made. We cut our screens manually with an Xacto knife, but also learned about photo emulsion screens.
> What you’re seeing there, isn’t a giant sticker being applied.
I thought it worth mentioning that stickers were in the mix too. In the town I grew up in, there was a printing company that made them for Atari. I recall being brought to a "local industry expo" event as a kid, and I have a vivid memory of seeing heavy-duty vinyl (?) stickers for "Pole Position" at this company's stand. They would have been designed to be applied to the marquees and control panels of the upright cabinet.
One thing that I don’t think the article mentions is how many times a screen could be used?
It really does depend on the thickness of the photo emulsion and the print ink. I've done silk screen prints where 20 prints were managed with little detail loss. The thing with the silk screens is that as a woven cloth, it's prone to slightly stretching with each pass of the ink, so the emulsion gets thin in spots rather quickly.
I would imagine that on the big industrial printers that are using a metal mesh screen and thicker emulsion, it's maybe closer to 50? Usually in a print shop doing a big run, there'll be four or five screens made for each print layer so when one gets worn, it's replaced in the printing rack. It really is an artform.
This seems very low. I have not worked in professional screenprinting environments, but all resources I have seen indicate potential for hundreds or thousands of high quality prints from a well prepared screen.
Youtube is truly a treasure.
It can be, when the video is worth while. The embedded video here isn't what I'd call worth while. Someone shot a lot of video but not video that shows the process in detail. There's equal footage of closeups of 80s mustaches as the process. They are impressive 'staches though
Try watching from 50 seconds in. It shows the process in as much detail as one would need I think.
Did you think I didn't watch it? It just shows the ink being applied. It does not show how the screens were made. It doesn't show how the screens are aligned. It shows a guy with a glorious mustache swapping screens, but cuts to a close up of said 'stache while the new screen is being installed. So, no, not as much as one would need.
tl;dr: plain old silkscreen printing. Nothing revolutionary
Today it would be a vinyl wrap, so interesting to see the old tech if you didn't know about it.
TLDR the slop: screen printing directly onto the cabinet sides.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=lpY8gBAzF9U
(Video is embedded in the article.)
Yes, screen printing, but there's more to it than those two words!
And the video in the post was sourced and uploaded by...the blog post author.
Also, let's be serious, that blog has been writing about arcade related things for over a decade https://arcadeblogger.com/2013/04/01/1814065/ and running a podcast since 2020, and the author wrote a book in 2020.
One could say he puts real effort into all this, you know?
If you star changing the term slop into meaning content someone made that you don't like, you begin to diminish the word, and also who are you to categorically dismiss a stranger's work for someone else? Not good form.
TLDR implies you didn’t read - therefore you don’t know if it’s slop.
But seriously it does read well like normal thoughtful human writing, so I am on the side of it not being “AI slop” while also noting that you didn’t claim it was.
I noticed AI-slop style phrasings, especially (but not only) the "Watching the footage today" paragraph.