Printing on cork ball?

Stolbovsky

Hi there, I wanna use it for printing on cork balls, is it possible? The balls have polished smooth surface, but on site and in FAQ I didn't find anything about printing on wooden or cork objects.

Lenore Edman

I've never come across cork balls before. If the surface is smooth, it shouldn't be a problem. We have a list of types of things to print on here:

http://wiki.evilmadscientist.com/Spherical_media

dnewman

My immediate concern would be the ever-present voids you find in cork.  The pen tip follows the surface, moving up and down with variations in surface relief (heights).  If the pen passes over a void, the tip will drop into the void.  But when it tries to move past the void it will get stuck...  It needs to have a nice gentle ramp it follows up to exit the void.  That is, the tip follows the surface but expects changes in height to be nice and smooth and graceful. A sudden drop isn't necessarily a problem. But then exiting from that sudden drop is.

Soooo, you'd want to fill any voids beforehand.  There's plenty of wood filling compounds meant to do exactly that; meant to fill tiny voids caused by the grain in woods.  These won't be tiny voids though.  However, there may be a second, beneficial effect of using a grain filler: it may seal the surface sufficiently that you get tighter lines (better sizing in typography speak).  With coarse, absorbent surfaces the ink soaks in a spreads out making the lines a bit fuzzy.  With a slight seal, that effect will be lessened and the lines will be crisper and thinner, better matching the pen tip's width.  (Chicken eggs vs. duck eggs can exhibit this: the more porous chicken eggs have inferior sizing compared to duck eggs.)