Anyway, I want to go over the processes of screen printing[printing?:printing cutting finishing solution], step by step.
1. Prepare artwork. You need high quality artwork in a digital format. Read my post about the various file types adequate for screen printing.
2. Print[Print?:printing image graphic cutting solution] a film[film?:film cutting machine]. A film is like a high quality transparency. I use 8.5×14″legal size and 13″x19″oversize films that I get from PosJet out west and print them with an Epson 3000 large format printer.
3. Burn the screen. Tape the film to the bottom of the screen, reversed, so that the design will be burned to create a stencil correctly.
4. Tape the screen. Different screen printers use different sorts of tape for this purpose. There are tapes designed specifically for applying to a screen, but I and many other printers just use packing tape, which I get in contractor packs in the paint section of Home Depot.
5. Load and register the screens. If you’re doing just a one-color design and have only one screen, make sure it’s taped and load it into your clamps, leveling it to have even off contact from the platen, and making sure it’s not crooked or anything by comparing it to the grid that you should be drawing on a platen.
6. Do the prints. Load the shirts onto your press and print them. I have a HIX 6/6 press, so it has six platens, and I normally load them all. If you’ve got an oven, do the printing then pull off the shirts and twist and put on the conveyor belt (you’re oven is close enough to your press that you don’t have to move much to put them on the belt, right? It should be).
7. Clean up. Scrape up all the ink that you can to put back into the ink jars, unless it’s been a long enough print run that inks have started to stiffen, like if you were printing with opaque inks and they’ve started to get stiff, as you don’t want to use that again.
8. Sort, box, notify. This is at least what I do: Take all the shirts or whatever you printed and sort them into stacks by size, then box them by folding a half dozen at a time. This seems to really help maximize how many garments can fit in a box, and folding batches of six takes much less time than folding one by one.
9. Reclaim the screen. After you get the ink and tape off the screen, you’re free to reclaim the screen. My method is to use hot water and spray both sides, then spray chemical reclaimer onto the inside, then the outside, then scrub the outside of the screen (the bottom side, what touches the shirt) really well, then the inside really well.
So those are the steps of screen printing. I don’t think I missed anything major. After reclaiming and before applying new emulsion you may want to degrease the screen. I never degrease but most people say its necessary. Flatbed printing is a fashionable and advanced technology today. Flatbed printer is a brand new digital product on the market. We always called it digital flatbed printer. I just don’t do it because it seems to be an unnecessary step, as I haven’t had any problems caused by not degreasing.
