Engraving Machines Information Center-EMICSteel engraving and The Process of Steel Engraving
Steel engraving, is a commercial engraving technique for printing illustrations, based on steel instead of copper. It has been rarely used in artistic printmaking, although was much used for reproductions in the 19th century. Steel engraving was introduced in 1792 by Jacob Perkins (1766-1849), an American Inventor, for the use of banknote printing. When Perkins moved to London in 1818, the technique in 1820 became adapted by Charles Warren and especially by Charles Heath (1785-1848) for Thomas Campbell’s Pleasures of Hope with the first published plates engraved on steel. The new technique only partially replaced the other commercial techniques of that time as woodcut, wood engraving, copper engraving and later lithography. All the illustrations of the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911 are steel engravings.
Most engraving is done by laying out the broad, general outline onto the plate first. This is commonly referred to simply as etching. After this step is complete the artist can move to strictly engraving the work. The tool most commonly used for engraving is the burin, which is a small bar of hardened steel with a sharp point. This is pushed along the plate to produce thin strips of waste metal and thin furrows. This is followed by a scraper which removes any burs as they will be an impediment to the ink. It is important to note that engraving must be done in the reverse or mirror image, so that the image faces the correct way when the die prints. One trick of the trade was for engravers to look at the object that they were engraving through a mirror so that the image was naturally reversed and they would be less likely to engrave the image incorrectly. Steel plates can be case hardened to ensure that they can print thousands of times with little wear. Copper plates can not be case hardened but can be steel-faced or nickel-plated to increase their life expectancy.
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Title: engraving_machinePublished: Sep 29,2010
Category: Engraving Machine Repository.