Today I Printed: Wedding Invitations

Fri 30 April 2021

Ok, so I didn’t actually print the invites themselves, but I made a set of stamps that let us mass-produce nice looking invitations. The biggest problem was actually finding a blue ink pad that was big enough for the larger stamps. In the end we got a big blank pad online, and filled it with some ink from the local stationary store.

It took a few tries to get it right, so here are the tips I picked up:

• Use PLA. I tried TPU first (because rubber stamps, right?), but it turns out that it wicks ink, so you’d end up with spotty stamp coverage.
• Lightly sand the face of the stamp. This helps it pick up more ink, giving you a more even print. It will also even out any bumps from your printer.
• Don’t over-extrude. This kind of goes without saying, but since you’re printing lots of small, tall letters, you really want to tune the linear advance so that you don’t get stringing.

Here are a few prints as I worked that out. You can see some of them are absolutely terrible!

Finally I ended up with some stamps I was happy with. I put some wood on the back to make holding them easier, and to ensure that pressure was distributed evenly.

Making the invitations was very satisfying after all that, and went pretty smoothly (apart from an accidental upside-down stamp!).