I did my grad art piece at art school (Emily Carr in Vancouver) on making large UV printed Van Dyke prints of 3D generated art. These were done by using the output from a Lightjet film printer, where I printed a positive image. Then I enlarged this onto 24x30 inch ortho film. I could then contact print those on large sheets of VanDyke treated watercolor paper.

After school I worked for a couple of years at Cymbolic Sciences (now apart of Canon) on large format film printers, like the Lightjet. Most of the printers used lasers that were focused onto the film via a spinning mirror, and one of those was a high power IR laser to print onto printing plates. I kept thinking back to my VanDyke prints, how I could make "big" prints. I would ask the engineers about UV lasers, or UV LEDs, but those were very rare and expensive at the time (the blue LED had been out for a year).

Anyhow, the rise of cheap DIY CNCs and the availability of cheap UVs got me thinking that I should try to build