Silk Screen Printing on Fabric

>>1098526
A buttload of masking tape, boards or shirt boards, some aerosol fabric adhesive. A lot of people find it more economical to rescreen rather than clean screens. You can get a hell of a lot of designs on one screen though, hence the virtue of a buttload of masking tape.

>>1098563
Thanks. What pitch for the screen should I start with? I've seen it range between 32T and 120T (not sure what the T means) - what does that translate to? Strands per inch?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/271808026254?lpid=122&chn=ps&adgroupid=41088503464&rlsatarget=pla-259290720462&adtype=pla&poi=&googleloc=9045652&device=c&campaignid=672297739&crdt=0

Is it worth trying to makeshift some of the equipment? Like the squeegee for instance - a 10cm one costs about £12. Can't I just make one?

>>1098526
I know a guy that does this. Keep a detailed list of how u mix colors or find one online. See, ink looks different on different colors. Like bright red looks fine on white but looks blood red on black unless u lighten it up. Get ready to ruin a few test shirts.

He also uses fruit of the loom exclusively. Not sure why

>>1098816
Is it worth getting big pots of cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white so I can make my own colours? I could use Photoshop to get a rough approximation of the CMYK values, then adjust. I've got a 1/100g digital scale so I could weigh the inks.

>>1098526
Your light might not work as some fabric inks will only set with UV light. But now that I think about it you're probably using it to set the stencil on the screen.

Also steer clear of speedball inks if you can.

>>1098835
>But now that I think about it you're probably using it to set the stencil on the screen.
That's right.
>Also steer clear of speedball inks if you can.
Really? Why? The first video I watched,the guy seemed to be shilling Speedball. They seemed decent enough.

>>1098845
I've never had a good experience with em. Their white for fabric has to be applied super thick for it to even look half way decent. And the second time you wash the shirt all the ink cracks. Their ink for regular paper is better but their fabric stuff is like below "student grade" in quality

Also some ink manufacturers have a swatch book that will list the inks and quantity by weight needed to make Pantone colors

>>1098893
I was looking at Speedball for the screen ink, not the print. There was a pack with the screen ink, "settler" and removal (to use the screen again) - the actual pigments was another issue in itself,

>>1099054
>screen ink

What emulsion?

>>1099341
Here's the video. Speedball photo emulsion is all I got. Ignore the matress shill halfway through...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDDE8VvViFo

I still don't know what density screen to start with.

>>1098526
OP, look around for a good art supply stockist. Maybe you can find a kit that has all the basic things you need.

I'm a former silk screen printer (but that was more than a quarter century ago). I worked screen printing from the time I was 16 until I was 26. I started in a small shop near the seaside making touristy crap and moved on to work at many different type of shops, large and small.

I've pulled a squeegee over many types of ink onto many types of materials and I've run quite a few printing machines too (the most fun was being a mechanic at a bottle printing factory - I had about a dozen machines to set up and maintain, and they were all operated by women. The factory owner had an eye for pretty ladies and that made the job a lot more interesting that it would have been otherwise).

Probably the most shirts I ever printed was at a now defunct shop that specialized in providing items to the carnival trade. They had an early version one of these: http://www.mrprint.com/equipment/challenger-iii-automatic-screen-printing-press

Which, looking at the thing, is mostly unchanged. The compressor we used to run the presses that was huge, more than twice the size of my '78 Mk. 1 Fiesta.

We also had machines like these: http://www.mrprint.com/equipment/flatbed-graphics-presses

A good place to start is older books on screen printing at the library. This will help you understand the old school techniques that are actually fairly easy to reproduce at home.

Start with small pots of the basic colors (quarts here in the US). Good ink is expensive. Mixing your own colors is probably not a good idea as the first project unless you already have some familiarity with arts. In any case I recommend to concentrate on the mechanics of the task before you start mixing your own inks from base colors. A previous poster mentioned keeping a formula book (a simple digital scale as mentioned will be very useful) and that is spot on advice.

Continued..

>>1100138 continued

Multi color jobs require careful registration and normally this means a four-color capable manual press, most home printers start out with one-color jobs. But you can also attach the fabric to a thin board and use that to re-register for multiple colors.

Don't make your own squeegee, it's the most essential tool for the job to go right (unless you're a good woodworker then have a go). Start with a 70 durometer blade. Know that at some point the blade will dull and need to be sharpened (with a belt sander) or replaced.

>>screen ink
>What emulsion?
I do believe you are talking about emulsion. Any hobby grade emulsion will do for a start. Try not to use a lamp that has a "hot spot", you need diffused light to set the emulsion. Watch this one on building an exposure unit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zif0NBOeBc

Go read this explanation to get a hint about screen mesh sizes:
http://www.screenprinting.com/screen-printing-mesh-size-information-1

There is no one answer. You have to match the mesh to the ink and the impression and the substrate and the blade... generally, the finer the mesh, the finer the detail possible. But if you use too fine detail for a job then the ink may not cover the substrate properly because after it passes through the mesh there has to be enough of it to flow together to make a solid color and this is affected by the material you are printing on and the viscosity of the ink. I recommend having a couple of different mesh screens on hand and experimenting with them to see the result, in a short time you will understand how your ink and squeegee interact with the mesh and substrate.

Practice on crap materials first, like paper and scrap fabrics, before you start in on shirts.

Oh and have fun. You've made me wax nostalgic for the days of my youth.

>>1100139
>You've made me wax nostalgic for the days of my youth.
Silk screening is truly a young man's game.