SPP Saidane's Print Process

imgprojts · Jun 11, 2025

And I still find it very puzzling as to why I am getting positives when I use black pigment CMC+PVA (50:50), sulfamic acid (a pinch to ph3-4) and sodium benzoate. Here is an example of such a thing, I exposed this to 30 minutes under a 50W LED at 390nm. I sprayed 0.3% peroxide on it, then bathed it in dilute citric acid ph 4-5. Finally I sprayed the bejisus out of it for like 5 minutes in 50deg C water, scalding hot. How does that even work???

imgprojts · Jun 15, 2025

I've simplified the formula even more:

Mix 5% PVA (5g in100ml)
Emulsion:
2g PVA
0.2g FAO
0.1g Sodium Benzoate
Pigment

I've tested this with my washer shadowgraph testing system with good results with poster acrylic paint and with mica powder.

Except for black, you'll see a decidual image. You can easily coat over the previous exposure without damaging it. Just let it dry for long enough. Avoid painting it too thick or you'll get a really bad result. Thin coatings is the way to go.

After quite a bit of reading, as it turns out, I'm not the first person digging into this particular combo. Well maybe specifically for photography. But I've seen it mentioned in holographic forums replacing the PVA with gelatine and the FAO with FAC. But people mention PVA (PVOH) and FAO quite a bit. I've read a few papers regarding hydrogels made from PVOH crosslinked with Sodium Benzoate and in other ways and mixes including CMC and other polysachrides. There's a good long list of things that are both safe and cross linkable.

imgprojts · Jun 15, 2025

I've just discovered one more quirk. I tested a dilute FeCl + SB mix. This resulted in a faint image, hardly remarkable. Then I added FAO and the image started getting slightly more defined but no improvement with more FAO. each time things were slightly different until I realized that when I spray the 0.3% peroxide on the image it immediately starts to dissolve the image. So I then developed one by dunking it half way in the dilute acid bath only to watch it dissolve immediately. The trick is that as soon as the image is wet by the peroxide you immediately dunk it in acid. The faster you do it, the more color you keep. This is really a very interesting and maybe useful note. Maybe I totally screwed in making my peroxide. I got a 12% jug from HD and been using that diluted to make 0.3% 100ml at a time.

imgprojts · Friday at 11:29 PM

Having a conversation with Koraks I have a new thing to try this weekend. PVA + riboflavin + amine + acrylate. I got the riboflavin and amine coming tomorrow morning. Some have had success adding just those two ingredients but our friend Chad lasname Geepetee keeps insisting in adding an acrylate. As it turns out its not too expensive like $26 bucks for 16oz of MMA. According to this same friend, It can be used even at 5% total polymer volume. I then realized that water soluble 3D printing ink is basically acrylate monopolymer so I will try that. I'm not going to eat it, I mean I will try it in the photo-polymer. I got my new (new to me) 80's microscope setup with a 3W LED. I had to gut that thing out it had a huge heavy transformer inside. I replaced it with a USB wire, a latching switch and a 3W LED on an aluminum heatsink. total 10 to 30 grams vs a good half kilo of metal. I can get 400X without oil immersion and its cool! I have 100X for wide field and 1000X whenever I ever want to try oil immersion. There has to be something already known that can replace the bichromate stuff. My simple PVA formula seems to work OK for UV systems but not strong enough for use in a projector.

imgprojts · Friday at 11:38 PM

Here are some images of the multilayered PVA sample and another that was single layer. These are 100x. Also I started collecting all my used samples from last week I'm a single bottle lol. One test batch had new cyanotype formula apparently. It makes for an interesting possibility.. One go cyanotype+PVA+CMC. The CMC provides that weird positive part where the PVA doesn't dissolve.

imgprojts · Saturday at 8:02 AM

Oh...i think this is the reason I was getting positives:

US3097097A - Photo degrading of gel systems and photographic production of reliefs therewith - Google Patents

It says there that you can make a polymerized gel such as PVA/CMC that contains metal ions such as Fe+3 mixed with a dye...such as the random dyes used in mica pigment depolymerize. Basically after exposure you can then wash off the illuminated areas and the non illuminated areas will stick around.

The PVA and CMC mix when mixed with FAO and citric acid then polymerizes maybe? And then the dye depolymerizes it when exposed to light. Its 5am, I've been reading patents trying to sleep, I could be just stretching my guessimetry.

imgprojts · Saturday at 9:49 PM

I think we got something!!!

Actual values tested
• PVA – 3 spoons (5% solution in tap water PH controlled to 4 using sulfamic acid)
• FAO – 0.26 g
• Citric acid – 0.24 g
• Riboflavin – .03 g turns liquid orangy yellow but clear. hard to mix
• TEOA – 0.46g
• Acrylate (3D printing ink Sunlu water washable clear blue) – 1.03 g hard to mix starts as an unmixable luggy and turns mix into a foam after about a minute of mixing.
• Pigment – 0.19g to taste (well dispersed) Color Black mica ~35micron sheets

I think I can probably paint one sheet 8.5"X11" with this formula

Mixes well with only a slight 3D printing ink odor...but there an odor so it means there are fumes.
Result: Exposure to 380nm 50W at 3.5" distance for 3 minutes. Development 5 seconds peroxide spray 0.3% followed by very dilute (and black, very dirty full of previous inks and all sorts of oxalate residues) citric acid water. Evidently the exposure is way too much because the pigment clearly has light leaks from the outer rims of the washers I used. additionally comparing the before to the after, there was very little if any erosion of the dry mix matrix (I will compare under the microscope). It dries slightly tacky before exposure. very slightly tacky. The image can be seen as a sheen over the areas unexposed. The exposed areas become more matte. I was expecting the thing to work as a positive but I didn't follow my plan and just painted it and exposed it as I had done before with just the PVA. images to follow.

imgprojts · Saturday at 9:54 PM

One more comment. I literally jetted my focet on to the image and it resisted. Below you can see the mixture after adding all the active ingredients. You can see the before and after. I'm going to try a shorter exposure to see if that increases sharpness or of it just washes away.

imgprojts · Saturday at 10:07 PM

Yup it sharpened a bit but I still see some light bleed. No apparent degradation of the ink on the exposed side. Normally with the FAO only I develop quick or else the image starts to run. But here the image was shot with warm water jet. Not a little trickle, we're talking water splashing out of the sink. I though maybe the bleed part would go away if I used a more aggressive jet.

imgprojts · Sunday at 11:24 AM

OK, I got significant developments literally. Last night I prepared some samples of the new polymer formula. I added 1ml of water and made 3 samples, then added fine carbon in addition to the mica powder and made 3 samples, then I added 1g CMC and made 3 samples and finally added .1g of sodium Benzoate and made 3 samples.

I took one sample of each and left it in the bathroom under very bright LED light. Phillips ultra definition daylight, so slightly blue in my opinion, but doesn't matter. After 8 hrs this morning I exposed all four of those for 1m of 380nm LED light. The result were very nicely defined lines.

imgprojts · Sunday at 11:27 AM

So I through interesting.. I noticed a much more yellowish tinge in all samples and I exposed them all wet for 5 minutes same UV lamp. They all turned orange. But then I took one sample and dunked it in dilute HCL. The orange immediately dissolved.

imgprojts · Sunday at 11:30 AM

Next, I looked at exposure times. Having already gone from 3 minutes to 1 minute, I tested 30 seconds, 10 seconds, 5seconds and here are the results from left to right. The result was the same with little to no loss of material under a strong water jet.

imgprojts · Sunday at 12:23 PM

First image! I exposed on my projector for 5 minutes. Normally for new cyanotype the exposure is 15 minutes. There's definetly an image in there. Its supposed to be a trolley on a busy urban street.

imgprojts · Sunday at 6:40 PM

The speed of this emulsion is about 5 seconds. its too fast. the previous image was over exposed and to even see the trolley I ended up washing most of the central part of the image. The sides where there was no direct light don't clear to paper white. The other thing is that clearing take a long long time. I just keep getting more and more yellow water for tens of minutes. So I will need to figure out a way to slow the process down a bit. I've just finished dilution the active ingredients in 50ml of water and the using only 1ml. The result after 1m exposure was a perfect exposure as before, but somehow hard to clear. I used poster paint this time. That may be the reason. But wow, 1/50th. Except for the Sunlu stuff which I kept the same ratio as before. Maybe I need to reduce that too.

imgprojts · Monday at 11:32 PM

Exposing the new samples for 5 minutes with 1/5th the activator does not yellow tinge the paper as it did before!

New mix:

Activator:
50ml water
• Riboflavin – .01 g turns liquid orange yellow but clear. hard to mix
• FAO – 0.14 g
Ph measures ~5 keep Ph at around 4
• TEOA – 0.49g - liquid becomes dark orange and has Ph ~9
Citric acid – 0.65 g -liquid is light yellow and has a Ph ~4

Emulsion:
1.93g PVA
.34g Sunlu makes a very milky white mix
.96 poster paint
1ml of activator

I think for anyone using a UV lamp this stuff works exactly (very differently) than Gum Bichromate.

1) First off, no yellowing
2) relatively safe-er except for the Sunlu stuff
3) you can make the coatings really thick in ink and they got staying power. I literally tried to brush the material off on this reduced activator and I got nothing to come off. This could be good and bad. I assume that at some point the polymerization would be weaker. I think I will play with the Sunlu stuff and try to dilute it in alcohol and use a smaller portion with more control that way. Currently Anycubic for example is selling their 1000g bottle for 15 bucks. For a Joe Shmoe like me that's an infinite amount of prints if all I need is .5g for a few prints. Infinity is 2000 prints . But I think this material is swappable with more inexpensive materials.

Anyway, just like that I am proved wrong, no, infinity is not 2000 prints but 40,000 prints because I just diluted the entire emulsion from 1ml to 20ml and guess what, it still worked at 1minute exposure minus the poster paint stain on the paper. Anyway, now I guess the challenge is to somehow come up with a decent image...ie, the process. Clearly the chemistry works, but what is the proper way to apply, expose and develop it and how to do that for multi-layer image.

imgprojts · 2025-06-24T00:05:15-0400

Here's a microscope view one of the dilute samples. This one has carbon. Looking at the stain vs the covered area one can clearly see that the non paper white is due to some sort of stain that just wicks into the paper fibers. If I coat the paper first with a hardened PVA coat maybe that will clear. The tests that use mica only do clear because the color is in large particles that get stuck above the paper fibers.

imgprojts · 2025-06-24T01:05:18-0400

Without giving this much thought, it occurred to me that CMC sucks at flowing anywhere. So after dilution to 20ml, I've added 5 grams of CMC and 4 grams of fine carbon pigment. And I tried this with the original one gram of pigment too. You get paper white with a heavy pigment load and hopefully a less sensitive image forming formula??? On the right you see the first formula that was uber loaded with pigment , resin and activator. On the left you see the latest formula.

imgprojts · 2025-06-25T00:02:28-0400

Looking at breaking the formula, here's my first experiment. Mixed PVA with black mica. Then I started adding ingredients sequentially. Not surprisingly nothing happens until there's monomer. This was a 1 minute exposure per sample the sample where I added the TEOA simply washed right off unexpectedly. Surprisingly the monomer was not the strongest. When changing the pH to just some level of acidity that's when it polymerized the best. I'm testing the addition of FAO and then I will change the order of mixing to try the strongest items first.

SPP Saidane's Print Process

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SPP Saidane's Print Process

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