i am looking to make a paper wallet from tyvek. a friend has a wallet made from tyvek sold through www.mightywallet.com. i dont like the designs they have other than a couple, but i want variety.

I don't have any personal experience printing on Tyvek, but I know that in the 1970s Sony (among others) was printing some of its technical manuals on Tyvek ... so it can be done. I imagine that it's pretty much like printing on ordinary paper, except that Tyvek is more flexible (less stiff), which may make it more difficult to run through a standard printer or printing press.

[This message has been edited by Marvin McInnis (edited 10-14-2011).]

The problem is not getting the sheets through the press, it's the drying of the ink. Ink dries by a combination of absorbsion & evaporation. Paper is pourous, Tyvek is not. The ink sits on top. You'll need someone with experience printing on plastic based materials. In years past, I've been involved with printed tyvek projects but they were long run commercial stuff, not economical for short runs. I'm not sure if todays' digital printers will work. Digital printing (basically copiers) is the way to go with short runs. We have a pretty high end Konica. If I can dig up some Tyvek, I'll try running it through. I know it prints on gloss stock & the toner drys & adheres real well, no smearing. Large format plotters print on banner material which is basically a Tyvek type material. So that might be the way to go. They work from roll stock & the smallest I've seen is 36", so you'll need to set your file up to print in multiples. They can print any length you want but are limited to printing on the width of the material. Keep in mind thats they only print one side. Try calling a sign shop that has a large format machine. Around here, the charge for paper is mostly, $ 5.00 sq ft. I'm sure the banner material is probably triple that. You could also try a silk screening shop. Silk screening is basically paint on whatever material you chose.The problem here is you'll need to pay for a screen & setup for each color. This is spread out over the run. So you can see it's also not cost effective for a short run. I've been in this business a long time but without more details, I can't really make any other suggestions. Good luck.

Tyvek is Dupont's name for spun-bonded polyolefin. It is a spun polyolefin fiber that's compressed to thin sheet form. It requires a special lacquer type ink for a good bond. It's generally labeled as Tyvek ink by manufactures such as Sinclair Valentine and NazDar/KC screen printing ink companies. You can purchase hobbyist screen printing kits from those ink suppliers, but you would need to have your images burned into your screen by a printing company with the specialized photographic and exposure equipment. You may also be able to hand paint your images onto the tyvek if you have a good hand.

I did read that it's not recommended to run tyvek through a laser printer because I could melt and jam things up. I have a pretty nice color laser pei ter I'd love to use for its clarity but probably can't.

I screen printed Tyvek for many years. It was always printed on a flat bed press using Tyvek lacquer based inks. Sizes ranged from copy paper size up to 20 foot long banners for Weyerhauser and major oil companies. They were never short runs, so I disagree with your link regarding that. Banners for service stations often took a week or two to produce the full order. We used a gas-fired conveyor belt dryer and only occasionally had problems with offset or picking in the stack. Usually it was during hot weather when we added a retarder solvent to keep the screen open.

We also printed on a 21 stage web press, but that was small format, high quantity. The difficulty was in the static generated as it passed through the printing, scoring and die cutting stages. Those inks were water based.

You should be able to screen print designs and copy with a hobbyist screen printing setup as long as it isn't extremely fine detail. Starting out, I'd suggest only single color designs until you're familiar with methods of registering one color to another.

I've always wondered why they don't print images of siding on tyvek.

It would improve the look of the much of the 'housing' in central and northern Wisconsin.