Hello! My name is Rhen Bennett and I’m interning at the Sonoco Institute this summer. So far, I have learned tons of new information about what goes into making a print on a printing press. For starters, I had to learn how to make photopolymer plates. There are three main machines the plates must run through before they are finished and ready to go onto a sleeve and into the press. These machines laser the design into the mask, change it so that light can be seen through the plate and finally wash and dry the plate. After it’s on the sleeve I set it to the side and begin prepping the press for printing. I check the station I will be using the plate at and make sure there is a rubber roller cleaned and ready to print and grab an anilox roll from the shelf and insert it into the station as well. Together these will pick up the ink from the ink pan and evenly disperse it across the plate surface. I then have to install a doctor blade onto the station, which keeps the ink from building up too much on the anilox roll. Finally, I grab my paper rolls with the pallet jack and insert them onto the unwind area so the paper can run through the press.
When all of that is ready, I can insert my plate sleeve onto the sheath in my station and turn on the press. I couldn’t have learned any of this without my boss Kenny. He went at my pace and made sure I fully understood every aspect of the process before allowing me to do things on my own. For my first week, I feel that I am well on my way to becoming a printing expert. I am currently about to start my senior year here at Clemson for my major in visual arts. I am from Charleston, South Carolina, but have been coming to the Clemson campus for most of my life as my family’s blood runs orange! My career goal is to work towards making video games as my profession. I have always loved playing video games and being artsy, so to combine the two I would like to be a modeler in the video game industry. With visual arts here at Clemson I work in all aspects of art from ceramics to printmaking. Unfortunately, because of how the classes line up, I have never been able to do the printmaking studio, so I felt that coming to the Sonoco Institute to learn how to work on the press for the summer would be a good substitute for the course I was lacking.
