Tuesday, November 14, 2017

How to Screen Print Shirts professionally

Silkscreen printing could be a bit daunting initially, however it's easier than it's and it's doable to line up a printing space in your house for affordable. We'll show you the way you'll be able to know with a minimum quantity of materials.
how to screen print shirts professionally
how to screen print shirts professionally


The basic plan behind silk screening is pretty straightforward and works almost like a stencil. rather than excision shapes severally, you coat a screen in exposure emulsion, then cut a picture out employing a bright light-weight. The video on top of walks you thru the method, however, let's get in additional detail, beginning with the provides you would like.
Set Up a Silk Screen search in Your Home

Step 0: Get Your provides

First things 1st, you would like to induce your provides so as. Here's what you need:

Screen and frame (you should buy these severally at a neighbourhood art store or purchase a frame and screen like this one


  • Photo emulsion and sensitiser
  • A 250-watt bulb
  • Latex gloves.
  • A sable area (closets work fine).
  • A t-shirt
  • A T-shirt design for screen print
  • Squeegee 
  • Silk Screen material Ink
  • The small piece of cardboard (that will match within the shirt).


Step 1: produce Your Image

For your 1st try, begin with something straightforward while not plenty of thin lines. a typical silhouette exploitation Photoshop is simple thanks to going. you would like a solid black image as a result of its solely real purpose is to dam the sunshine. The image you decide is going to be burnt into the emulsion in step four. Once you compromise on a picture, print it out on an electrostatic printer onto transparency paper (if you do not wish to shop for a box of transparencies most copy retailers copy onto a transparency for around a dollar).

Step 2: Coat the Screen in Emulsion

The emulsion comes in 2 parts: the sensitiser and also the emulsion. combine them along in step with the directions on the bottle. Lay down your screen on a garbage bag. Pour slightly of the emulsion mixture on the screen and unfold it out on the screen with the squeegee. The emulsion ought to cowl a rather larger space than the image you would like to print. If you would like to, repeat the method till the screen is coated and you cannot see through it. you would like a skinny, even layer across the total screen.

Leave the screen in a sable area for 2 hours till it's fully dry.

Step 3: Expose the Image on the Screen

It's time to reveal the screen to the sunshine. in this same sable area (don't activate the sunshine yet), lay down a black material or board. Lay down the screen and frame with the screen aspect down on prime of the black surface. Then lay the transparency along with your image thereon on the screen wherever the exposure emulsion is. Tape the transparency down with scotch tape or lay a chunk of change it.

Move your lamp thus it's concerning one to 2 feet on top of from the screen. Angle a lamp with the 250-watt bulb at the transparency along with your image thereon and leave the area. A table lamp works best for this, however, if you do not have one, produce a replicator out of tin foil and place it on top of the lamp to reflect the sunshine down. don't activate the other lights. watch for concerning 10-15 minutes. come back to the area and thoroughly pull up the transparency. you ought to see faint blue lines wherever the image is burned into the screen. If it's smart, it is time to wash it off. If not, leave it many additional minutes and check back. Overexposure can build the image bleed, thus take care.

Step 4: Clean the Screen

Spray your screen down with cold water from a hose, sink, or shower head. Notice however the section wherever your image is starting to flake off? Continue spraying it till you'll be able to see through your image clearly. Hold the screen up to the sunshine to create positive it's precisely like your transparency. Let the screen dry. Once it's dry, cowl any exposed components of the screen (where there's no exposure emulsion or your image) with tape.

Step 5: Print!

Lay your shirt out on a flat surface. Stuff a sq. piece of cardboard within the shirt beneath the world you would like to print on. Lay the screen over the shirt with the look wherever you would like to print it.

Pour a little quantity of ink horizontally across the highest of the screen. Take your squeegee and build one swish movement down the screen, exerting robust pressure (if this can be your 1st time, it is a smart plan to undertake this on a scrap paper before printing on your shirt). Run the squeegee up, down, left, and right handful time to push all the ink through onto the shirt.

Lift the screen up, pull the cardboard out (carefully), and you are done. If you would like to create positive the image sticks on the shirt for a protracted time, throw the shirt within the kitchen appliance on four hundred degrees for concerning thirty seconds.

Step 6: Clean-up

Screen printer's ink dries extremely fast, thus as before long as you are done printing shirts, wash the ink off the screen thus you'll be able to use it once more in the future. If you would like to print a very totally different image, you'll be able to use AN emulsion remover like this to wipe the screen clean thus you'll be able to apply the material and frame.

Final Verdict:

Screen printing will take slightly whereas to induce accustomed. As you follow you learn the precise temporal order of exposure, the quantity of pressure required to push the ink through, and alternative very little quirks. Once you get accustomed however it works, bumping your styles up to 2 or 3 colours is not troublesome. whereas most retailers have giant machines that handle screen printing, it's even as straightforward to try and do in your home as long as you are willing to hold back. Have some tips of your own you would like to share? preach within the comments.

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