I haven’t covered the basics of screen printing because so many other people already have. There’s a ton of information out there that has helped us so I’m just going to link a bunch of it here! Sit down with some popcorn and watch!
Ryonet has many good videos on youtube and they sell excellent DVDs. Catspit Productions has some great videos. The only drawback (for us) is that Catspit only prints with toxic Plastisol ink. We don’t use that ink very much, only on one type of shirt, our UV reactive shirt, prefering to stick to more evironmentally friendly products. But they are a great source of DIY information. Basically, you can find most any type of beginner information on youtube.com. You can find a master list of the stuff we use here.
Prepping And Coating Screens
We don’t degrease or abraid the mesh. I know you’re supposed to, and we did at first, but then we found we didn’t need to after all. You have to find what works for you.
Putting emulsion on your screen
We mostly use one coat on each side. We also work in normal room light, fluorescent or 60 watt incandescent, but we are using dual cure emulsion. We just put our screens in a big cardboard box with a black cloth draped over it to dry and we separate them with votive candles or small jars in between the screens. But the storage closet is nice!
Another - How to Put Emulsion on Your Screen (Nice one!)
Placing Your Film On The Screen
Image Placement on the Screen and Screen Exposure
Click to Watch
How to Burn a Screen
Good information and a cute girl! We basically do things much this way but we use dual cure emulsion, expose the screen for 5 minutes and do all of this in low normal room light, but no sun light.
A couple of different ways to expose your screens
Screen Exposure Problems PART 1
Getting Your Art To Screen
Washing Out The Stencil & Reclaiming
We dab our screens dry with a paper towel and sometimes dry it further with a hair dryer, NOT held too close because nylon mesh can melt. We also use a special hose from Victory Factory instead of a pressure washer. A pressure washer is better, but you can get along with less.
Here is a Speedball exposure chart that may help when exposing screens using light bulbs.
Next: Rocking the Basics Part 2 - Water Based and Discharge Inks
Plastisol inks are hardly toxic. In reality they contain very low levels of PVC’s and phthalates. Much of that buzz is marketing propaganda as many Sates do not even recognize plastisol inks as a problem. I can assure you that discharge printing inks are far more hazardous than standard plastisol inks.
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