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How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

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Re: How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

#21

Post by sowbug »

The article mentions the "registration" process. Those multicolored gunsight-like symbols you sometimes see on the edges of printed things are called registration marks. They help the operator quickly judge whether the plates are aligned. Slightly different from the pins and stops the article mentions; those are to align the screens, while the marks are to see whether the result is aligned.

This is all familiar to people above a certain age. Younger folks who grew up without Sunday color comics might still be able to find a slightly blurry plus sign on the bottom of a paper milk carton.

Re: How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

#23

Post by illwrks »

ivan888 wrote: post #13
foodandart wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

Years and year ago, I worked in a sign makers and helped out with screen printing on occasion. Screens can last a very long time provided they are created corrected. From memory there were at least 200+ prints from a single screen - I think they may have been t-shirts or tote bags.

Re: How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

#24

Post by fnord77 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #12
fnord77 wrote: post #8

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.

I suppose, but my local high school art class does some silk screen printing, so it's not dead

Re: How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

#25

Post by jogu »

Symbiote wrote: post #16
nertzy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"And here's the key bit...", etc. I agree there's a few signs that this was at least editorialized by AI. That being said, saying it's slop is a bit of a stretch.

Re: How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

#26

Post by Suppafly »

ivan888 wrote: post #13
foodandart wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

>This seems very low.

This, it seems like a confidently incorrect answer, but I don't really understand why they'd act informed when they aren't.

Re: How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

#27

Post by mrandish »

Animats wrote: post #18
SoftTalker wrote: post #7

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.

Right. That's a medium-volume production process. Some years ago, I had a boxed software product made. I went to the box factory with a disk with the imagery, and sat down with the woman who made up the printing plates. She aligned the imagery to a box template, and I signed off approval. Connected to her Mac was a lithography plate maker the size of a car. That made the masters by photolithography. I was invited to…

Same experience. It was awesome watching a massive Heidelberg press print hundreds of four color, die cut boxes with blind emboss and UV coating a minute. Even after I had competent art directors working for me, I'd still sometimes tag along for press checks on new products because it was just cool to see.

Electronic distribution is awesome, but there was something magical about seeing customers grabbing my boxed software off an end cap at Best Buy. Always fun if a customer was reading the box to walk up and ask if they had any questions. They'd ask "Oh, do you work here?" I'd just smile and say, "No, but I'm pretty familiar with that software."

Re: How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

#28

Post by yesfitz »

After 30+ years of decals and wraps being the way to decorate arcade and pinball cabinets, Spooky Pinball reintroduced direct-printing, known as "butter cabs"[1]. Although this time via large inkjet-type printers.

Just like the screenprinted Atari cabinets, it's worth seeing the Spooky butter cabs in-person. While decals have come a long way in fidelity and application, there's a feeling of satisfaction when the image is part of the object, rather than on the object.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTbtn-tasXM

Re: How did Atari apply side art to Arcade Cabinets?

#29

Post by nasalgoat »

yesfitz wrote: post #28

After 30+ years of decals and wraps being the way to decorate arcade and pinball cabinets, Spooky Pinball reintroduced direct-printing, known as "butter cabs"[1]. Although this time via large inkjet-type printers. Just like the screenprinted Atari cabinets, it's worth seeing the Spooky butter cabs in-person. While decals have come a long way in fidelity and application, there's a feeling of satisfaction when the imag…

It's still dot sublimation printing versus screened artwork. It looks good but you can't get the spot colours like you can with screens.
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