DIY screen printing.
March 19, 2005 10:49 AM Subscribe
Looking for general advice in regards to DIY silkscreening tees.
I'm interested in doing small runs of shirts - artwork, mostly. Does anyone do it? Any good resources? What's the best way to cheaply prepare screens for printing?
I'm interested in doing small runs of shirts - artwork, mostly. Does anyone do it? Any good resources? What's the best way to cheaply prepare screens for printing?
Best answer: To do silkscreening well takes a fair amount of equipment. You could probably set up 3 screens, a screen-coater emulsion scoop, a table jig for printing, a squeegee, and a heatgun for curing for about $300 or half that at discount prices, but this will be industry-grade equipment for the most part.
Don't buy the lame Speedball kit from the craft stores. You can replicate that at a hardware store (save for inks and screen emulsion) for 1/5th or 1/10th the price with better quality. It's just a lame little screen frame on hinges with a cheap little chipboard platen for the shirt or flatstock.
The really, really cheap way is to ignore the screen printing and go ghetto.
Knock together an appropriate sized frame out of 1/4" or 1/2" pine spars. (Adjust frame spar thickness as needed to suit larger and smaller frames.)
Staple wire mesh or window screen mesh to the frame as tightly as possible without bowing the frame too much or causing tearing of the mesh.
Get yourself a can of 3M Formula 77 spray adhesive.
Cut out a stencil in cardstock, paper, manila folder, whatever. Because you're going to apply this stencil to the mesh, it can have "islands" in it. It doesn't have to have "runners" connecting the floating bits.
Lay out your stencil bits on a sheet of paper and spray the appropriate side. Start building your stencil on the mesh. (Don't spray the mesh! It'll just clog it!) Get your stencil nice and flush and well-adhered. Mask off the stencil with masking tape or more paper so that everywhere that you don't want pigment to pass through is masked off.
You can lay your shirts flat without a platen or pallete inside, or you can make a cardboard or chipboard platen to stick inside. In screenprinting, you'd spray the platen with the Formula 77 and smooth it down real good to keep the screen(s) from moving or peeling up the shirt during one or more prints. (This is basically how screenprinters have held the shirt still and dimensionally stable for multiple colors since the beginning of screen printing on pre-sewn t-shirts.) You can do that if you like, but this is ghetto screenprinting. It'll protect the shirt from being sprayed through to the other side, so it's probably a good idea until you get your spray control down.
Get yourself some enamel or acrylic spray paint in the color(s) of your choice. With practice, you can do some tight multi-color and multi-screen shirts, but start with single colors.
Lay your stencil and screen on your shirt and check the positioning. Protect everything from overspray.
Spray through the stencil lightly at the recommended 8-12" distance or whatever. You should have just enough "off contact" between the stencil/frame and the shirt that the stencil will cut the spraynicely, but the spray will manage to fill in the gaps behind the fabric mesh itself so it doesn't leave a mesh pattern in design on the shirt. Unless you like it like that. The thinner the mesh is and the more open space there is, the less mesh-pattern you'll get. About 1/32" or 1/16" off contact is usually more than enough. This is why you put the stencil on the bottom of the mesh, so it's closest to the shirt.
If you can feel a thick coating of paint on the shirt after it's dry, you sprayed too much. Unless you're cool with it being like that.
You can also use multiple paint colors through a single-color stencil to do some cool effects, swirls, marblizations, blends, and more. You can apply airbrush or graffiti artist techniques as well. Shading stuff or adding patterns or textures is possible.
posted by loquacious at 2:50 AM on March 20, 2005 [2 favorites]
Don't buy the lame Speedball kit from the craft stores. You can replicate that at a hardware store (save for inks and screen emulsion) for 1/5th or 1/10th the price with better quality. It's just a lame little screen frame on hinges with a cheap little chipboard platen for the shirt or flatstock.
The really, really cheap way is to ignore the screen printing and go ghetto.
Knock together an appropriate sized frame out of 1/4" or 1/2" pine spars. (Adjust frame spar thickness as needed to suit larger and smaller frames.)
Staple wire mesh or window screen mesh to the frame as tightly as possible without bowing the frame too much or causing tearing of the mesh.
Get yourself a can of 3M Formula 77 spray adhesive.
Cut out a stencil in cardstock, paper, manila folder, whatever. Because you're going to apply this stencil to the mesh, it can have "islands" in it. It doesn't have to have "runners" connecting the floating bits.
Lay out your stencil bits on a sheet of paper and spray the appropriate side. Start building your stencil on the mesh. (Don't spray the mesh! It'll just clog it!) Get your stencil nice and flush and well-adhered. Mask off the stencil with masking tape or more paper so that everywhere that you don't want pigment to pass through is masked off.
You can lay your shirts flat without a platen or pallete inside, or you can make a cardboard or chipboard platen to stick inside. In screenprinting, you'd spray the platen with the Formula 77 and smooth it down real good to keep the screen(s) from moving or peeling up the shirt during one or more prints. (This is basically how screenprinters have held the shirt still and dimensionally stable for multiple colors since the beginning of screen printing on pre-sewn t-shirts.) You can do that if you like, but this is ghetto screenprinting. It'll protect the shirt from being sprayed through to the other side, so it's probably a good idea until you get your spray control down.
Get yourself some enamel or acrylic spray paint in the color(s) of your choice. With practice, you can do some tight multi-color and multi-screen shirts, but start with single colors.
Lay your stencil and screen on your shirt and check the positioning. Protect everything from overspray.
Spray through the stencil lightly at the recommended 8-12" distance or whatever. You should have just enough "off contact" between the stencil/frame and the shirt that the stencil will cut the spraynicely, but the spray will manage to fill in the gaps behind the fabric mesh itself so it doesn't leave a mesh pattern in design on the shirt. Unless you like it like that. The thinner the mesh is and the more open space there is, the less mesh-pattern you'll get. About 1/32" or 1/16" off contact is usually more than enough. This is why you put the stencil on the bottom of the mesh, so it's closest to the shirt.
If you can feel a thick coating of paint on the shirt after it's dry, you sprayed too much. Unless you're cool with it being like that.
You can also use multiple paint colors through a single-color stencil to do some cool effects, swirls, marblizations, blends, and more. You can apply airbrush or graffiti artist techniques as well. Shading stuff or adding patterns or textures is possible.
posted by loquacious at 2:50 AM on March 20, 2005 [2 favorites]
A note on spraying versus silkscreening - you may have find that you're more limited color-wise with spraypaint. I've found it very difficult to get light colors to show up on a dark shirt. With silkscreen, you can do a layer of white and then a layer of whatever color you actually want, and it'll show up, but you can't really do that with spraypaint. Dark cloth almost soaks up light-colored spraypaint, leaving you with a faded ghostlike design. Which can be cool, of course, but it's not always what you're looking for. I've had difficulty with spraypaint slowly washing [or sometimes rubbing] off of the shirt, although admittedly I use cheap stuff.
You don't need to spend $300 to get a good cheap silkscreening setup working. You'll want the following:
- a screen [you can buy silk and make a frame and stretch your own, but it might be worth it to buy a prestretched screen.]
- screen emulsion and emulsion remover.
- a dark room [an actual darkroom is easiest, but not necessary.]
- a strong bright light - or UV lamps - for developing the screen.
- hinge clamps attached to a table
- a stout squeegee [for fabric, you'll want one with a rounded edge. Don't go for those really bendy cheap ones that come with screenprinting kits, get a sturdier one. One that's wider than your design [and a few inches narrower than the frame] is what you're looking for, size-wise.]
- your pattern [in the form of a stencil or a design printed on acetate]
- access to a largish sink [or an outdoor hose]
Altogether, I suspect you're looking at less than $100 of equipment, there. Closer to $50, even. You want to start by coating the screen with photoemulsion. You can buy a scoop coater, or you can simply use a large piece of cardboard to drag the emulsion over the screen [though you'll need to clean off the globs that'll form on the sides of the screen with a paper towel.] Make the coat as thin and even as possible, and then put the screen to dry in a dark room, under a fan. Ready your design while drying - if you're using something printed on transparency paper, color over the black bits with a sharpie to make it darker. The design or stencil should be a positive - that is, it should look the way you want your finished product to look.
When you're ready to develop, put the screen face up in the dark room uner your developing light, and put your pattern on top of the screen. How long you let the screen develop depends on the strength and type of your light; while there are charts on line which give suggestions as to developing time, distance from light to screen, and light strength, you'll have to do some experimenting here to get things right. When the developing is over, take the screen to a large sink and wash out the areas which were covered by the stencil - that emulsion will wash off while the rest remains. If there are holes in the emulsion where there shouldn't be [i.e., the edges of the acetate] you may have underdeveloped the screen or you may want to try a stronger light. However, if the holes aren't too bad, you can simply paint over them with photoemulsion and let it dry in the light.
Next comes the printing - put the screen in the hinge clamps and get ready to go. Make sure your ink is fabric ink rather than acrylic. Additionally, realize that you don't want the screen sitting right on the shirt - put coins or pieces of foamcore underneath the corners of the frame. You'll want to make some practice prints on paper [to make sure that the design's coming out right] before you start on the T shirts. You may also want to tape a large piece of acetate under the screen and print onto that, once - you can then move around the T-shirt or paper you're printing on underneath the acetate to get things registered right. This is very useful for multi-color designs. When you print, you want to flood the screen - that is, lightly drag the squeegee across the screen - first, and _then_ drag it once down the screen, pressing harder and at an angle. Once you're done printing, wash out the screen immediately - you don't want ink drying on the screen, as it clogs the holes.
After you're done with a design, you can clean the screen with emulsion remover. It's easiest to use that stuff along with a pressure washer to get emulsion off, but you can also succeed with emulsion remover, a scrub brush, a hose or sink, and a great deal of patience. Without a pressure remover, you'll probably have to count on buying new silk [or new pre-stretched screens] more frequently. Once all of the emulsion is off, you can start the process again.
Depending on the ink, you may need to iron the shirts after printing. For shirts, you definitely want to use the platen system loquacious described - it's relatively difficult to do screenprinting on shirts without that kind of tool, as the fabric on the front of the shirt can stretch or slide around against the fabric of the shirt's back, distorting your design.
Admittedly, this stuff is more expensive than spraypaint and a cardboard stencil - but as I've said, you may be able to get longer-lasting shirts [with more color options] in the long run. It depends a bit on how many shirts you want to do, how similar you want them to look in the end, whether you care if they last for a long time, and how much you find yourself enjoying the printing process.
posted by ubersturm at 2:52 PM on March 21, 2005 [2 favorites]
You don't need to spend $300 to get a good cheap silkscreening setup working. You'll want the following:
- a screen [you can buy silk and make a frame and stretch your own, but it might be worth it to buy a prestretched screen.]
- screen emulsion and emulsion remover.
- a dark room [an actual darkroom is easiest, but not necessary.]
- a strong bright light - or UV lamps - for developing the screen.
- hinge clamps attached to a table
- a stout squeegee [for fabric, you'll want one with a rounded edge. Don't go for those really bendy cheap ones that come with screenprinting kits, get a sturdier one. One that's wider than your design [and a few inches narrower than the frame] is what you're looking for, size-wise.]
- your pattern [in the form of a stencil or a design printed on acetate]
- access to a largish sink [or an outdoor hose]
Altogether, I suspect you're looking at less than $100 of equipment, there. Closer to $50, even. You want to start by coating the screen with photoemulsion. You can buy a scoop coater, or you can simply use a large piece of cardboard to drag the emulsion over the screen [though you'll need to clean off the globs that'll form on the sides of the screen with a paper towel.] Make the coat as thin and even as possible, and then put the screen to dry in a dark room, under a fan. Ready your design while drying - if you're using something printed on transparency paper, color over the black bits with a sharpie to make it darker. The design or stencil should be a positive - that is, it should look the way you want your finished product to look.
When you're ready to develop, put the screen face up in the dark room uner your developing light, and put your pattern on top of the screen. How long you let the screen develop depends on the strength and type of your light; while there are charts on line which give suggestions as to developing time, distance from light to screen, and light strength, you'll have to do some experimenting here to get things right. When the developing is over, take the screen to a large sink and wash out the areas which were covered by the stencil - that emulsion will wash off while the rest remains. If there are holes in the emulsion where there shouldn't be [i.e., the edges of the acetate] you may have underdeveloped the screen or you may want to try a stronger light. However, if the holes aren't too bad, you can simply paint over them with photoemulsion and let it dry in the light.
Next comes the printing - put the screen in the hinge clamps and get ready to go. Make sure your ink is fabric ink rather than acrylic. Additionally, realize that you don't want the screen sitting right on the shirt - put coins or pieces of foamcore underneath the corners of the frame. You'll want to make some practice prints on paper [to make sure that the design's coming out right] before you start on the T shirts. You may also want to tape a large piece of acetate under the screen and print onto that, once - you can then move around the T-shirt or paper you're printing on underneath the acetate to get things registered right. This is very useful for multi-color designs. When you print, you want to flood the screen - that is, lightly drag the squeegee across the screen - first, and _then_ drag it once down the screen, pressing harder and at an angle. Once you're done printing, wash out the screen immediately - you don't want ink drying on the screen, as it clogs the holes.
After you're done with a design, you can clean the screen with emulsion remover. It's easiest to use that stuff along with a pressure washer to get emulsion off, but you can also succeed with emulsion remover, a scrub brush, a hose or sink, and a great deal of patience. Without a pressure remover, you'll probably have to count on buying new silk [or new pre-stretched screens] more frequently. Once all of the emulsion is off, you can start the process again.
Depending on the ink, you may need to iron the shirts after printing. For shirts, you definitely want to use the platen system loquacious described - it's relatively difficult to do screenprinting on shirts without that kind of tool, as the fabric on the front of the shirt can stretch or slide around against the fabric of the shirt's back, distorting your design.
Admittedly, this stuff is more expensive than spraypaint and a cardboard stencil - but as I've said, you may be able to get longer-lasting shirts [with more color options] in the long run. It depends a bit on how many shirts you want to do, how similar you want them to look in the end, whether you care if they last for a long time, and how much you find yourself enjoying the printing process.
posted by ubersturm at 2:52 PM on March 21, 2005 [2 favorites]
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if you don't find enough information in those threads and their external links, feel free to email me [address in profile] for further information/firsthand experiences.
posted by ubersturm at 11:02 AM on March 19, 2005 [1 favorite]