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shirt process
Since the way we make shirts is quite ametuer and fairly inexpensive, we'd like to share with the world how the process goes down. This section deals with how to produce shirts. If you are wondering how to make your own press, go to the build your own section. Before we begin, you must be prepared to sacrifice some money. This money is called seed money. Get a job for a month and get a few paychecks so that you can comfortably spend this much. Bear in mind that some of these materials are consumables and you will have to purchase more later. Materials 01 Wooden Press $120 (premade) or $25 (build your own) 01 14"x16" (or greater) Screen $15 01 Bottle of Emulsion Remover $15 01 Bottle of Screen Degreaser (ink remover) $15 01 500w Halogen shop utility light $10 02 Quarts of Ink (your choice of color) $40 01 Quart of Diazo Emulsion $20 01 12" Squeegee $15 01 6" Drywall knife $7 05 Garbage Towels $15 or Free if you have them 01 Computer / Inkjet printer (we hope you have one) $0 01 Garden Hose $20 01 Large Fan $20 01 25' Extension Cord $10 10 Blank Shirts $40 01 500°C Heat Gun $15 20 Inkjet transparencies $15 -- Chunks of Misc. Cardboard -- Lots of paper towels -- Talent.. don't make ugly ass shirts or ripoffs. We've seen just about enough of the god damn Hollister or Abercrombie fake restaurant/company shirts like FROSTIE'S LATE NIGHT COFFEE HOUSE or shirts with obvious and retarded sexual references. Total: $412.00 (safe with $425.00) or $317.00 (safe with $325) Such a commitment is quite the risk and YOU MUST be into this sort of thing. DO NOT purchase these materials if you just want to make a handful of joke shirts. It will take a LONG TIME to build legitimacy and to earn back your seed money. I advise you to have a co-investor. However, it is extremely fun and worthwhile simply to try. You CAN make quality shirts with just some ingenuity and patience. Resources Costs seem too high? Oftentimes companies offer price breaks with kits.. look for these. + silkscreeningsupplies.com (kits & everything you'd need individually. We started here, you can too.) + ebay.com + google.com --- 
Preparing Your WorkspaceMake sure everything you need is in order and in a large, open, I-can-fuck-this-place-up sort of space. The more organized and on-hand everything is, the less of a mess you'll make and the faster everything will go. Get lots of paper towels ready for the emulsion coating and ink coating, then of course for clean up. They will definitely be your best friend in this whole process. Watch out, the ink you'll use is most likely oil-based plastisol ink which, if it gets on your clothes, WILL NOT COME OFF. Coating Emulsion (Your first hour to two hours) Emulsion is photo (UV) sensitive and should be applied to the screen indoors or at night. Use a scoop applier or go cheap and get a drywall knife from home depot and coat your screen with the *sensitized* emulsion. (emulsion comes with a small bottle of sensitizer which makes it (duh) sensitive to UV radiation). Try to go over the screen again and again to coat everything BUT afterwards, scrape as much excess as you can off to achieve an even but thin coat. Drying Place a fan or fans around the screen(s) of emulsion that you have elevated above ground and laid down horizontally. This is to prevent the emulsion from beading and rolling down the screen creating inconsistencies. The fans are of course to aid with the drying speed. You can stack the screens too but they will just dry slower. Make sure if you do this there is no stray emulsion on the frames or you could make things more messy when they don't need to be. Let sit dry for 30-90 minutes... the longer the better... make sure NO SUNLIGHT or intense light hits them. Normal 100w or less incandescent or flourescent (coated white) bulbs are fine. When storing it might be a good idea to put a towel over them, make a cabinet for them, or place them in a vacant, windowless room.   (notice the emulsion is a different color pink->green... this is just because the pictures are taken from different times. most emulsion comes pink or green and sometimes blue) You must make your design all black and print it out on a transparency. This will make it so that when the screen is being exposed, the light doesn't pass through the screen where all the ink is, and thus doesn't cure. The size on the transparency will be the exact size of the design. If designing in photoshop, I suggest 300dpi to ensure sharpness. 
BurningBurning the image is one of the easier parts, you just have to watch the clock like a hawk. You basically place the dried, emulsion coated screen flat side down (no ridges) on an opaque, dark, flat surface. Suspend a halogen work light above it (these are like $10.00 at home depot) about 12"-16" above, centered. The ideal time for me is exactly 14 minutes (but yours can range from 13-15 min. based on preference). Plug in the light and watch (or don't) it cook for the exact amount of time. I can't stress that enough. After it's done, unplug the light immediately and take the screen outside. Blowing Out Use a pressurized hose (one with a spray nozzle is great) and spray it at the screen @ medium pressure on the same side you were exposing. Do this for like 5 minutes with a flashlight (if its dark). In our experience, you can do this in overcast daytime too. Just watch out, the sun can expose your screen as you wash it out so never do it in direct sunlight. As you spray, your design will slowly become "blown out" (the emulsion will go away where the black ink was). This allows the ink to travel throught the screen in these places thus transferring the design on your garment. Spray the screen until the areas where the design are are CLEAN (completely clear) of emulsion. Watch out! DO NOT take too long or else the entire screen of emulsion will become soggy and start to peel. 
Drying (again)Put a fan up against the screen and set it however you want. You might want to dab the screen with a clean and lintless towel so that it will get most of the initial moisture off and speed up drying. Let it sit for around 30 minutes. This will make it so the screen is completely dry. Otherwise, it'll be sticky and hard to work with. Preparing Your Screen Load the screen into the press and tighten down. You're going to want to tape down all the areas on the screen where there's no emulsion on the border. These are just the areas that you couldnt exactly get to when coating (NOT the design). You might want to tape down ALL the area around the design with masking tape or painter's masking tape just to make the clean up easier (you can lift the tap up and all the ink on it with it and just throw it away). 
Positioning the ShirtPlace the shirt on the table where you need it. Rotate the screen down onto the shirt and get an idea of where the design will be. Sometimes you can shine a light through the screen to see where it passes through and shows on the shirt. This will show you where the design will approximately appear if you actually print. Once you have what you want, rest the loaded screen on the top of the shirt and get jo ink. Inking & Stroking Use strips of cardboard to grab clumps of ink out of the container and dab a small amount across the top edge of your design. Use the squeegee and lightly move all the ink across the design (no pressure) just to spread it over the ENTIRE design and get everything flowing. Once the whole design is covered, stroke across the whole design at a a 15-25 degree angle from vertical leaning towards you. Make sure you apply medium pressure and the excess ink should all build up at the end of the squeegee. Curing (or drying... again) Lift up the screen slowly. The ink will "peel" off the screen and the design will appear. If you didn't push too hard, it'll be sharp. If you didn't push hard enough, it'll have spots of no ink or generally thin ink. Sometimes you can't prevent the "thin ink" look if you print white ink on a black shirt. This is defeated by if you do 2 coats but that is very hard and often just ends up screwing up the design by making a shadow if you dont have a complicated dual press. Take your heat gun and angle it at a 45 degree about 4-6" above the design and heat, move, heat, move, etc. Since you don't have a spot dryer ($700), you never will really know if its completely dry. The best thing to do is to spend a FULL 5 MINUTES on it. This may seem like a short time, but its LONG when just swaying a heat gun to and fro. After you heat everything a lot it'll be touchable in about 5 minutes of cooling and you're DONE. Repeat the process from Positioning the Shirt to here to produce multiple shirts. Cleaning up If you have lots of stray, old cloth towels they are AWESOME for ink cleanup as the oily ink adheres to clothing better than paper towels. Other than that, just clean off the squeegee (the rough side of a sponge works well too) so that there is no residue ink. Clean off as much ink as you can off the screen so that none dries IN the screen. This can be accomplished by spraying the screen with any degreaser like 409 Cleaner and going over it with paper towels... A LOT. Take the tape and stuff off your screen if you wish or leave it there if you're going to print some later date with the same color. Seal up the ink the best you can. Arrange things in an organized fashion so that you're ready to print again the next time. If you want to put a new design on a used screen, they cost $5-$10 to be professionally reclaimed or you can buy emulsion remover as a chemical from any screen printing supplies store and do it yourself. It's difficult and tetious and is similar to blowing out the image cept with chemicals + water instead of just water. To make it worth your while, don't make a design for like 1 or 2 shirts. Make at least a dozen or more.  
There you have it, bitches. This is how we make shirts. Everything takes practice and you'll get better and more efficient as you go. With everything you do in life, in order to get results it requires patience and persistance. It'll be probably more of a money commitment than even what I list above (or less if you've got the hookups). Just stay straight, keep your head up, and if you fail try again. If you have any questions, give me an e-mail drew lustro 1/19/05 |
