How to Print T-Shirts:
Step 1: Preparing Your Artwork
Step 2: Printing Film Positives
Step 3: Making a Screen
Step 4: Exposing a Screen
Step 5: Selecting an Ink
Step 6: Setting up Your Screen Printing Press
Step 7: Printing T-Shirts
Step 8: Curing
Step 9: Cleanup
Step 10: Reclaim
photograph by Grind Time .
back to top ^
STEP 1: PREPARING YOUR ARTWORK
To print a shirt, you of course have to have something to print on the shirt. Whether you design the artwork yourself or a customer brings it to you, all screen printing starts with some type of artwork. When thinking about the artwork you want on your t-shirts, remember that garbage in equals garbage out. In effect, the better the quality of artwork you start with, the better timbre of a screen print you end up with. When screen printing t-shirts, you print one color at a prison term. If you are printing multiple colors, you will need a way to separate the colors from each other so you can create different screens for your design. You need one color per screen.
Reading: How to Print T-Shirts
A lot of screen printers use Illustrator, Photoshop, or Procreate to take care of their artwork needs. These programs separate and clean up the artwork to help you prepare for print. Never used Illustrator before ? Take this rid on-line course to learn the basics of the design course of study .
sometimes, you just need a fiddling help with making your design. You can purchase and download screen printing art. From brushes, texture packs, fonts, and skull packs, you can find the art you need to complete your next plan .
photograph by Press or Dye .
back to top ^
STEP 2: PRINTING FILM POSITIVES
once your artwork is created and the colors are separated, the adjacent step is to create a film cocksure. You will use this film positive to burn your persona into a silk screen. A film plus foil is basically like an disk overhead transparency. Whatever you want to print on the jersey, you print it out in blacken ink on the film positive .
There are many ways to make movie positives. You can pay a local print denounce to print the film, hand draw your visualize on the film, or purchase a compatible printer that you can use at home or in your shop .
back to top ^
STEP 3: MAKING A SCREEN
once you have printed on the films, it is time to make the screen door. A sieve printing frame consists of a wood or aluminum frame stretched with polyester engagement on it. The enmesh holds the effigy onto the screen and lets ink pass through when you press it with a squeegee. You will need to coat the engagement with emulsion in holy order to expose the design onto the screen door. Before you coat the interlock, it needs to be cleaned with a limited screen printing degreaser to ensure any debris, lint, or particles is washed off so no bulge or pinholes appear in your emulsion .
emulsion is idle sensitive, so coating the screen is typically done in a benighted board that has especial light-safe yellow bulb in it .
Applying the emulsion onto your screen requires the use of a outdo coater. You should select your soap coater size based on the size of your blind. A 4″ dispute between the scoop coater size and the outside dimensions of your riddle is recommended. This allows for a small space of open enmesh on all sides of your scoop coater to make coating easy while giving you the largest comfortable area for print .
photograph by Symmetree Clothing .
Most scoop coaters have two edges. One is more attack, and can be used to create a slenderly thicker level of emulsion for more ink deposit onto your dress when print. Thicker emulsion layers are useful when printing on sweatshirts and for other high-density applications. The early border of the scoop coater is called the sharp boundary, and will allow you to coat your screen with a thin level of emulsion. Thinner layers are great for printing water-based and free inks, or if you want a softer hand on your dress .
To coat your screen with liquid emulsion, first make indisputable that your emulsion is appropriately mix and that you are in a light-safe area. Pour a minor sum of emulsion into your exclusive coater, enough to fill the stallion bottom of the scoop coater evenly, from one side of the end capital to the early. Hold the screen vertically with your non-dominant bridge player, shirt side out .
If you do not have a darkroom, there ‘s another manner to make a screen. Using estrus transfer vinyl ( HTV ), cut and weed out the design. Place the vinyl on a screen and you ‘re ready to print. A vinyl stencil works well, but for shorter runs. It ‘s best to use plastisol ink when using a DIY screen because the water in water-based inks will break down the stencil agile .
photograph by Symmetree Clothing .
back to top ^
STEP 4: EXPOSING A SCREEN
After the sieve is coated and dried, align your film convinced onto the filmdom and expose it with a riddle printing exposure unit or an exposure light bulb for an allotted sum of time. The screen hardens to light, but the film positive or black area of the film blocks light from reaching the emulsion. This leaves the area of emulsion unexposed or soft .
Finding the right exposure time is a unmanageable undertaking. many factors like type of emulsion, type of exposure whole, enmesh count, mesh color, humidity levels, and more can affect how long a screen needs to be exposed. You will have to perform many tests before going into production. The best matter you can do is invest in a 21-Step exposure Calculator. The calculator will tell you whether the filmdom is over-cured, under-cured, or perfect. Learn how to use it .
After the riddle is exposed, plainly rinse it with water. The soft function of the emulsion that was not exposed rinses out, leaving areas of the engage open that reflects your design .
photograph by Salt & Pine Co .
back to top ^
STEP 5: SELECTING AN INK
The two most dominant allele ink types on the market are plastisol and water-based. They both have their pros and cons. Plastisol ink is opaque, bright, bright, and user-friendly. The ink is stiffer and needs chemicals to clean it up .
Water-based ink is balmy and is bang-up for vintage prints. The downside to the ink is the fact that it evaporates, which makes impression challenging. Achieving proper remedy is besides unmanageable.
Which one you use depends on what you or your customers want and the equipment you have at hand. To learn more about the nuances between the inks, please read this post .
photograph by PRNT SCRN .
back to top ^
STEP 6: SETTING UP YOUR SCREEN PRINTING PRESS
Before you are ready to start filmdom printing t-shirts, you need to step up the screens on your screen print compress. A blind printing wardrobe consists of a base that holds printing platens and a act of color arms. A manual press can be arsenic minor as a 1 color 1 station, or a large as an 8 color 8 station. automatic presses, like the ROQ, can be even larger ! Of course, if you have more color arms, you have the ability to print more colors at one clock. Likewise, if you have a higher measure of impression stations, you can print faster .
A great founder press is the Riley Hopkins 150 Press. Simple however versatile, the 150 press lets you learn the craft of screen printing. Practice printing on shirts, sleeves, tags, chests, and more. When you begin to grow, the 150 is perfective for live printing or for one-color jobs or tag and sleeve prints .
right before you clamp your screens into your press, you need to tape off the edges of your frame with screen printing tape. This helps keep ink from getting places you don ’ triiodothyronine want it to .
If you are printing a multiple color occupation, you ’ ll want to register the colors together so that they pipeline up correctly when you print all of the colors onto a shirt. Using a weight-lift with laser guiding arrangement or micro registration is extremely helpful when printing all right contingent and multiple semblance prints. once you believe your screens are in registration, you need to complete a trial photographic print to ensure that everything is lined up right .
photograph by Aerogant Printing Company .
back to top ^
STEP 7: PRINTING T-SHIRTS
Before loading your shirt onto the platen, you will want to make certain to apply adhesive material to the platen. This helps the shirt stick to the platen and not move around. Water-Based Pallet Adhesive is a capital way to adhere shirts to a platen. Load your shirt onto the press and get your printhead aligned. Before locking the print head into set above your shirt, make surely to flood the screen with ink. Once the print head is locked down, push or pull the blind printing ink across the shield to deposit the ink onto the shirt. You may need more than one round of this depending on how a lot ink was deposited. If you are printing multiple colors, follow these steps with your early screens .
Keep in mind that you may need to flash your shirt in between prints. This is particularly true if you are printing on dark garments with a white under basis. The flash dry helps to cure/set the ink. This gives you the ability to print another color on top of your first level. Learn more about printing an underbase .
photograph by Rogue Lab .
back to top ^
STEP 8: CURING
You besides need to cure your shirt after you are wholly done printing it. You can cure a shirt with a conveyer dry, a flash dry, or a heat imperativeness. The temperature at which the ink cure varies. Read the instructions on the ink container to learn the proper cure temperature. Water-based ink like Green Galaxy will cure between 300°F-320°F. Plastisol inks like Wilflex Epic Spot Process cure at 320°F. Low-cure plastisol inks like FN-INK™ cures at 260°F. The temperature that an ink cures at means that ink needs to reach that temp from the top to the bottom level. Before buying or using an ink, learn what it needs to achieve full remedy before implementing it in your shop. How long it takes to reach wax cure will depend on the ink type and the kind of equipment you ‘re using. Check out this article to learn more about curing inks with different kinds of equipment .
Use a laser temp gun or a doughnut probe to view the ink ‘s temperature. If a shirt international relations and security network ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate cured properly, the ink will not last and the print will start to degrade. To test whether the circus tent of the ink has been by rights cured, perform the stretch test. You will besides need to wash the jersey several times to make indisputable that the ink holds .
photograph by Symmetree Clothing .
back to top ^
STEP 9: CLEANUP
When you ‘re done with a subcontract, it ‘s time to clean up. Removing ink from screens will depend on what kind of ink you used .
first step to this action — scoop out all the surfeit ink and put it back into the ink container. You ‘ll save ink and make your life a short easier .
Water-based inks can be cleaned up with water system. however, the urine in water-based ink evaporates vitamin a soon as it is exposed to air. The more it evaporates, the more difficult it will be to clean it off. Using a product like Sgreen® Aquawash will greatly reduce the trope stain by picking up water-based pigments .
Since plastisol ink doesn ’ t dry out, it ’ south easily to clean. Lay your shield compressed and spray it with either an Ink Degrader or on-press slipstream and rub with a tabloid. Once the chemical is fully absorbed by the tabloid, repeat the process until the screen is in full clean .
photograph by Symmetree Clothing.
Read more: Mochi Ice Cream
back to top ^
STEP 10: RECLAIM
If you plan on reusing a stencil, you can skip this pace. Make sure all ink has been removed and that the sieve is dry before storing it .
If you ‘re done with a riddle, it ‘s time to reclaim it. You will need an emulsion remover and scrub brush. Spray the emulsion remover onto the riddle. Scrub in a round gesticulate on the movement and back of the screen until you start to see it soften. Let the chemical seep into the screen for 30 seconds. Please, do not leave the emulsion remover dry in the screen. If the chemical dries, the screen is no longer useable. After the time has passed, wash out the chemical and emulsion. Follow up with a degreaser and/or a dehazer. Store the sieve in a dust-free area to let it dry so it ‘ll be ready to be used again .
There you have it. You now know the basics of how to print t-shirts. Do n’t be hard on yourself in the beginning. Printing t-shirts is heavily. Everyone struggles with it at first gear. Keep testing. Continue practicing. It ‘s a long process, but it ‘s worth it in the end. Be indisputable to follow ScreenPrinting.com on Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook to keep learning more about the craft .
