Monday, December 20, 2010

The stuff we use, a master list.

More links than you can shake a mouse at.

Our best sources for silk screen supplies. We buy almost everything online.


Dharma Trading.com
DIY Heaven for Textile Artists (with very helpful staff).

Victory Factory
Great source for silk screens and basic supplies.

Silk Screening Supplies.com
Great source for all kinds of silk screen supplies.

Pocono Screen Supply
Another great source for silk screen supplies.


Our best sources for materials to screen print on

Shirts


Jiffyshirts.com
Good prices, volume discounts, no minimum quantity and they sell to anyone.

Blank Apparel
Good prices and no minimum quantity as well.

Alpha Shirt Company
Great for larger quantities and very nice to work with.

Paper

French Paper
Very high quality cards and poster printing stock.

Limited Papers
This place sells in smaller quantities than a printer or paper supplier. They will cut stock to size for a minimal fee. We print our posters on Cougar Opaque White 100# cover stock.


Our best source for outsourcing

Diesel Fuel
The king of screen printing, IMHO (they have done posters and stickers for me).


Inks we use

Union Ink Aerotex Water Based Textile Inks

Non-opaque water based inks that look great and stand the test of time on lighter color fabrics.

Matsui Discharge Inks (Ryonet’s brand is Matsui)
These inks need to be mixed with color pigments to make colors. More about that later.

Discharge Paste Color Remover

So great and easy to use! See my previous blog post.

Enviroline Opaque White Water Based Ink
Prints opaque white on black or dark colors.


Equipment we can recommend


Aluminum frame silk screens
Do yourself a favor and get aluminum instead of wood.

Victory Factory Spray Hose
This has worked for us instead of a pressure washer

Epson WorkForce 1100 Color Inkjet Wide Format Printer
A large format, low price inkjet printer we currently use to print transparency film.

Victory Factory Inkjet film
Works great with the dual cure emulsion we use.

Ulano LX-660 Dual Cure Emulsion
Dual Cure Emulsion, Many are good, but this is what we use.

AWT "Pro Angle" Scoop Coater
MUCH better than Magi-cote, SPS, Atlas, all the ones with plastic ends.

Aluminum UV Screen Exposure Unit
A good basic UV light unit.

4 Color, 2 Station Press
For the very low price, we have been satisfied, though if you can afford a better one, buy a better one. We bought the one without micro registration, but micro registration is a big plus. Ours doesn't have that but it's the lowest cost 4 color press I've seen. We ordered extra brackets and have made several custom platens for it.

The “Flying Wing” Ergonomic Squeegee

A very nice squeegee, though regular wood squeegees are fine too.

Test Print Squares
We go through a lot of these. Better to test on these than ruin a shirt or bag.

Mist
Sticky spray to make the t-shirt stay in place on the platen. Not to be confused with the old computer game I used to be obsessed with.

Ranar Forced Air Flash Dryer DA-1616/110
Took us a while to save up for it, but we are so glad we have this instead of the heat guns we were using. So far it is working great!

Raytec "MiniTemp" Thermometer
Very helpful to know if you have cured a print enough. I check almost every print with it.

Envirostrip Screen Reclaimer/Emulsion Remover
Works better than the toxic stuff.


Education

DVD's


Water Based & Discharge Screen Printing DVD

Specialty Printing DVD (Distressed, Retro, All over, Blends, Artwork & Tags)

A great book to get

Screen Printing Today
or Screen Printing Today
Sold all over the place.


Test Marketing - My test marketing web sites for my designs


Café Press
Zazzle


Sell the stuff you make in an online store.


Etsy.com


Our best web sources of information

Gigposters.com
A site for poster artists and screen printers. Very good information in the forums.

T-Shirtforums.com
A message board where you can ask questions and get help or read lots of info.

Screen Web
A screen printing magazine.

T-Shirt Magazine
A screen printing magazine.

Discharge Inks Ignite Hot Sales (an article)


Our wish list (wistful sigh)
Santa, please take note and remember... you have no proof!

A washout booth
Now that we finally have a place to install one!

Riley Hopkins 4 color 4 station Manual Press
With the aforementioned micro registration.


A thing that sounds pretty good.
I might have tried this if we didn’t have a starter exposure unit. Check it out.

SILKSCREEN POWER: How To Build a Portable Silkscreen Exposure Unit


That's all folks! If I think of anything I missed, I'll add it.

Next: Building Your Own Vacuum Table Poster Press

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