Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: DIY Conveyor Dryer Posted on September 8, 2013 by admin Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Building Your Own Conveyor Dryer DIY A while back, before we purchased our M&R Fusion Dryer, we decided to make our own conveyor dryer from materials available at our local Home Depot and Lowes. Our friend over at Toldeo Tee’s wrote a step by step detailed DIY guide to building the dryer, which can be found at T-shirtForums. But this is just a brief summary on building your own at home dryer. To start off you want to make a table which will serve as the base of your dryer. Our base was 30 inches tall by 4 feet wide. It was actually a shelving unit that we used to use for some folded shirts. Along the two sides we secured 10 foot air conditioning rails, which are used to hang AC units from the ceiling. These are used to hold the drive roller on one end and belt support on the other. The rails were placed with 2 feet extra on one end and 4 feet extra on the other. This leaves for 2 feet intake, 4 foot chamber and 4 foot cool off for when the shirts come out of the end of the chamber. To make the drive roller, we used 3 and 1/4 inch thick PVC piping cut to just below 2 feet with and capped it on both sides. We drilled holes directly in the center of both caps then lined the pipe with the mat used to line the inside of a toolbox. This lining give the roller grip so the belt can spin. Then we made 4 more of these rollers, but without any lining. We secured one on the other end and three more throughout the 10 feet. To secure the these we put 1/2 threaded pipe inside them and secured them on both ends with some bolts. It’s important to note that these rollers must be able t turn, so don’t fasten the bolts too tight. As for the drive shaft, we purchased a rotisserie motor at Lowes and and fastened it to its rod, then secured the motor to the end of the 10 foot rails. Next, we fabricated a belt from fiberglass screen door, which is fireproof. Wrapped the belt around all the PVC pipes and secured it with high temperature silicone glue. The glue is red and is as to tolerate high temperatures. It’s important to note that the belt should not be too tight, since the weight of the shirts helps tighten he belt. The final stage consisted of making a heating chamber, also known as the oven. The oven we built was made up of Micro Density Fiber, a material that is able to withstand high temperatures. The MDF boards look like wood, but are much heavier and thicker. We built a box around above the base (2′W x 4′L x 2′H). We opened holes on both the intake and exit to allow for the belt to roll through. Underneath the belt we laid ceramic tile, this served as a radiant heat reflector. Then purchased two 1000 watts quartz heating elements, and secured them about 8-10 inches above the belt (in the chamber). This acted as our heating source and the temperature rose to 1000 degrees at the bulb. The dryer is all done at this stage and ou should be all set now to print your custom t shirts! Here is the link to Toledo Tee’s step by step instructions: t-shirtforums/screen-printing-equipment/t195933.html Posted in Custom T-Shirts, Screen Printing, Screen Printing Tip Of The Day | Tagged conveyor dryer, DIY, Screen printing, tshirts | Leave a comment Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Printing On Sleeves & Sweatpants Posted on September 5, 2013 by admin The difference between an at home screen printer and a professional successful screen printer is the ability to adapt to your enviorment and meet customer requirements. Many times customers ask us, screen printers, to pint on other garments and other items. More off than not, customers will request a sleeve print or a print down the leg of a sweatpants. Printing on the sleeve or down the leg is actually quite easy if you think about it. It’s pretty much the same as printing on the front of a shirt or sweatshirt, but in a different location. In order to print, you will need a special pallet for your press. Usually the pallet is either one long pallet (about a few inches wide by 24 inches long) or is a double pallet that has two of these long pallets side by side (sort of like a long U). Set up your film to expose on a 23×31 screen and align it according to your pallet. Once the screen is ready you can set it up on the press like you normally set up your jobs. One, two, or three colors doesn’t matter, it’s just a matter of aligning colors. Now your screens are set up so its just a matter of printing the garments. Grab your squeegee (mine is about 5″ wide) and flood your screen. On the sleeve you can just go ahead and print, but for sweatpants the procedure is a bit different. Since the pants are made up of cotton and polyester, you should preheat the garment by flashing it before the print. The reason you need to preheat it is so allow the garment to slightly shrink before the 1st color is laid. This allows for proper alignment of any further colors being laid. Now it’s time to go ahead and print your custom shirts, sweatpants and other garments. Posted in Custom T-Shirts, Screen Printing, Screen Printing Tip Of The Day | Tagged Brooklyn screen printing, screen printing brooklyn, screen printing New York, T shirt print, T shirt printing | Leave a comment Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Printing On Polyester Posted on September 1, 2013 by admin Printing on hoodies and sweatshirts is very common in the printing business, therefore is safe to say that all screen printers will print on polyester goods at some point in their career. Printing on polyester goods is not so different then printing on cotton, but if not done correctly can be a disaster. To start off, when your garment is made up of polyester you will need special inks. For example if you are printing white ink on a 50/50 safety orange t-shirt, you will need to use white low bleed ink. If you don’t use the low bleed ink what happens is the pigments from the dye on the garment bleed into the ink and turn its color. So in the example, the ink would initially start off as white and after the shirt has run through the dryer the ink will turn a yellowish color. This happens because the orange from the shirt is mixing with the white. Furthermore, when printing on polyester goods it’s always a good idea to preheat the garment. The reason I say this is because polyester has a tendency to shrink when placed under heat. If you are printing a 3 color job your shirt will shrink during every flash and your alignment will be thrown off. To avoided this, you can just flash the garment first, then go ahead and “print flash print” etc. Finally, you should also be careful when throwing your shirt or sweatshirt in the dryer. Since polyester Is sensitive to heat, it will melt and burn away quicker. So if you usually run your dryer at a belt speed of 5.5 with a temperature of 1025 degrees for cotton, you might have to lower the temperature a bit and bump up the speed. This will avoid any errors when printing any custom t shirts or sweatshirts. Posted in Custom T-Shirts, Screen Printing, Screen Printing Tip Of The Day | Tagged Brooklyn screen printing, Custom t shirts brooklyn, Custom T-Shirt, screen printing brooklyn | Leave a comment Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Holding Your Squeegee Posted on August 30, 2013 by admin Today’s tip of the day involves the proper way to hold a squeegee while screen printing. Now although there are many ways to hold the squeegee, I will try to explain the two easiest ways. There are two ways to print using a squeegee, you can either push the ink through the screen, or pull it trough the screen. No one way is right or wrong – any way that works for you is the way you should stick with (remember it will take some practice). When using plastisol ink you most often have to flood the screen right before print and using water base you MUST flood the screen before every print. When you flood you hold the squeegee in a 85 degree angle towards the back of the screen and pull it forward towards your stomach. Since you are not “forcing” ink through, rather just “priming” the screen You don’t have to use to much pressure. At this point you need to decide whether you are going to push the ink through, or pull the ink through the screen onto the shirt. My preference, pulling, works as such. Hold the squeegee firmly with both hands. Make sure that you have your four fingers wrap over the top of the squeegee leaving only your two thumbs on the back side. In addition you want to make sure, there is no gap between the top of the squeegee and your palm, otherwise your stroke will not have enough support. Firmly push down the squeegee with your wrists at a 85 degree angle and pull forward. You basically want to “clean” the screen and by this I mean you want to not leave any ink behind the squeegee when you pull it. (You will usually hear a noise from the tip of the squeegee rubbing against the screen, this is good!). If you want to push the ink, you will pretty much follow the same method of holding the squeegee. After the screen is flooded , you hold the squeegee at a more acute angle and push the squeegee from your stomach to the end of the screen. Again you want to sort of “clean the screen”. Go ahead and try it! Go make your custom t-shirts! Posted in Custom T-Shirts, Screen Printing, Screen Printing Tip Of The Day | Tagged brooklyn screen print, Custom t shirts brooklyn, screen printing in brooklyn, screen printing New York | Leave a comment Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Curing Screen Printing Inks Posted on August 28, 2013 by admin Often overlooked, one of the most important aspect of screen printing is the curing process of the ink. Ink a tricky substance to deal with and if not properly handled and cured, the print will fade and crackle after the wash, or normal wear and tear. There are many different types of inks and each has a unique way of curing. Our choice of ink is plastisol ink. Plastisol ink is pretty much just melted plastic along with some other substances which is in a liquid form at room temperature. Water based inks can generally just air dry, because the water evaporates from ink evaporates from the surface of the shirts leaving the ink to dry up on the fibers. On the other hand, plastisol inks cure/dry much differently. In order for plastisol inks to dry it must be heated to about 325 degrees Fahrenheit. This doesn’t mean that the oven or dryer that she shirt is being cured in must be 325 degrees, rather that the actual plastisol ink on the shirt must reach 325 degrees. At around the temperature of 200 degrees the ink comes to a state which the surface is dry, but is still not bonded with the fibers; this is called the semi-cure state. Once the ink reaches 325 degrees it chemically fuzes with the fibers on the shirts (almost as if it becomes one with the fibers) and becomes “cured”. It’s crucial that the whole surface of Ink on every layer that is printed reaches the cure temperature (325 degrees). This can be done by slowing down the belt speed of the dryer and/or raising the temperature of the dryer. Our dryer is set to a speed of 5.5 and a temperature of 1025 degrees; it seems to work for us. If ink is not properly cured it can crack, fade or wash off. This is obviously not what you want as a screen printer, so here are some easy ways to check if the ink is cured. The method that I like and the easiest method is by using a temperature gun. This gun measures the surface temperature of the shirt and should read between 325-350 degrees. You point the gun at the ink on the shirt as it is coming out of the dryer. The other way to check is fairly simple, it’s called a stretch test. What you do is try and stretch the shirt and see how much of the ink cracks. Ultimately you want to make sure that cracks stay to a minimum. The last and best way to check is by throwing the shirts in the wash. If the ink doesn’t come off you did it right. Now go ahead and start printing custom t-shirts! If you are interested in getting some custom t-shirts in Brooklyn New York or anywhere in the U.S. don’t hesitate to ask us! Posted in Screen Printing Tip Of The Day | Tagged Custom t shirts brooklyn, Custom tees ny, Print custom shirts, Screen printing, screen printing brooklyn | Leave a comment Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Printing Inner Tags Posted on August 26, 2013 by admin Screen Printing tip of the Day: Printing Tags For most production involving screen printing the outside of the garment is 95% of most prints, however, with some clothing lines and other designs some customers may want a tag printed on the inside of their apparel to give it a little extra touch of customization. Tags are a great way from them to market their brand and create a unique piece of clothing. That’s where this tip comes in. As great as they look their often difficult to print and require a little bit of tweaking here and there, and your best print for tags may come from an entirely different technique. Here is our step by step process: Step one: Burnin’ the Screen For our specific tag printing we take our film and basically turn it upside down on the screen so that the sizes of the tag (S,M,L,XL) are facing up or out toward the frame horizontally like a normal image. What this does is allow us to print on our sleeve pallet without turning the entire shirt inside out. If you want to keep it simple you can burn your screen normally, and flip the shirt inside out (say if you don’t have a sleeve pallet) and print it as you would a normal garment. Using the sleeve pallet typically saves time and energy. Step two: Sizin’ Up As your printing, you’ll finish one size and move onto the next keeping track of your sizes and staying organized. On the screen leave open the size you plan to print and tape over the remaining sizes. If you want to start with S, tape over M,L,XL etc. so that as you move on you can remove the tape and reapply the tape accordingly so not to print multiple sizes or get ink clogged up in your image as you’re printing. It’s a somewhat tedious process but the goal is to give a clean, crisp tag that your customer will be satisfied with. Taking your time and adjusting for each print is key. Step three: Flippin’ N’ Rippin’ With your screen burned, set up, and ready to print get your shirts ready and your pallet locked in. As you print you’ll need to tear or cut the tags (tear away tag shirts are ideal). Be aware of your sizes and its often best to start with small and work your way up to stay organized. If you’re printing with a normal pallet put the shirt inside out and place it normally so the tag prints about 1” from the collar. If using a sleeve pallet you’re going to take the shirt and basically slide it up the sleeve, where its lined up with the according size, keep the area for the tag facing up and basically turning it inside out from the collar without having to adjust the whole shirt. It might take a little bit of adjustment but its much faster than turning the whole shirt inside out. Step four: Let em Dry As you remove and dry your shirts be careful to take them off keeping the tag up and open and laying them on the dryer so the entire tag gets exposed. In order to cure you can’t have the collar overlapping the tag and you don’t want ink to get on the collar so be careful and lay it face up letting it cure properly. As you print keep track of the sizes and stack em up as they finish and there you go! Fresh tags for some fresh T’s and a satisfied customer. Good luck printing! Posted in Screen Printing Tip Of The Day | Tagged Brooklyn screen printing, buy custom shirts online, custom shirts in ny, Screen printing, screen printing in brooklyn | Leave a comment Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Reclaiming Screens Posted on August 21, 2013 by admin Whether you’re a fully operating shop or a do-it-at-home printer there is always one problem all printers will eventually encounter: what to do when you’re out of available screens? Buying screens is always easy, but they can be expensive and if your local supplier isn’t close by going to get them can cost you time. Either way you’re spending money on something that can be recycled and reused pretty easily, and if done right relatively quickly. Re-claiming is a process involving taking previously used screens that you’re completely through with, removing all the ink and emulsion with a series of chemicals, and washing them clean so emulsion can be applied again and a new image can be burned. Here are the steps to guide you through it: Step 1: Get Em’ Together Gather up all the screens you’re not using. Old, new, dirty, weird, beat up, or otherwise and bring them to the reclaiming space in your shop or home. You’ll need to be close to a water supply, a hose or faucet, and for the best results and really the only way to do it right you’ll need a pressure washer. There are two approaches to take from here. You can either use a dip tank provided at your local screen printing supplier that is filled with emulsion and water, or you can use chemicals by themselves if you don’t have the means or necessity in terms of smaller operations. Step 2: Take a Dip Screen Printing Dip TankIf using a dip tank leave all tape on screens and submerge them completely in the emulsion mix for three minutes. After three minutes remove your screens and take the first screen you’re going to reclaim and set it up over a drain of some type. There is going to be a lot of water and a lot of chemical runoff so make sure you have the proper area to re-claim in before you begin. If you’re not using a dip tank take the emulsion remover you purchased and apply it to the entire screen while using a scrubbing brush to work the chemical in so it can work faster and break down the emulsion. Step 3: So Fresh, So Clean screen printingAfter the emulsion process the next chemical you’re going to use, along with your pressure wash is called an ink wash. This helps break down residual ink and clean the screen back to its (relative) original state and clarity. Using a scrub brush again spray your ink wash over the ink and scrub it into the screen. Take your pressure washer and blast away making sure to pull the trigger off the screen and then moving onto it while it is running to avoid creating holes. This is the process. Back and forth, front and back, blasting and scrubbing, spraying and washing, until the emulsion and ink is completely gone. It could take up to 15 minutes for some screens and you may not get the results you desire in terms of their clarity but even if you can see the old image in your newly reclaimed screen it can still be used effectively and again in another job. Step 4: Air It Out Once you’ve worn yourself getting out that ink and emulsion and your screen is clean again ready to have emulsion applied and used for another job remove your screen from the cleaning area and take it somewhere in a dust free environment where it can dry. When the screen is dry its ready for emulsion and the burning process once again. Re-claiming is the best way to save yourself some money and use your screens again. Even though it’s a process and sometimes a pain for all screen printers it’s the most effective way to keep the shop moving and make sure you keep making money and some quality apparel printing. Now get that power washer primed and all your old screens ready. Posted in Screen Printing Tip Of The Day | Tagged brooklyn custom shirts, buy custom shirts in brooklyn, Custom shirts in Brooklyn, custom t shirts ny, screen printing brooklyn, screen printing in brooklyn new york | Comments Off Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Applying Pallet Tape Posted on August 20, 2013 by admin The application of pallet tape in screen printing is an integral process of a solid print and consistency in the clearness and detail of your design. Without the use of pallet tape regular tack spray or glue can be used but usually the results are less than satisfactory. Here at It’s T-Shirt Time we regularly change our pallet tape to make sure are prints are above the average and our customers walk away with a product they can be proud of. Step 1: First remove previous, used tape completely from the pallet including all residual scraps and pieces so the next layer of tape has constant contact. Get your roll of pallet tape, a boxcutter, pair of scissors, or razor blade of some type, glue, and glue applicator (usually a roller or rag or sponge) and a squeegee to remove all air bubbles from under the tape. Applying Screen Printing Pallet TapeStep 2: With the previous tape removed and your pallet ready grab your roll and place the edge with 1-2 in. of overhang on the far side of the pallet. Press lightly across the top to create a way to unroll your tape and cover the entire pallet trying to keep it square as possible and leave 1-2 inches of overhang. Use your box cutter or razor or scissors to cut the tape and put the roll aside. It may take some application and reapplication to get the tape square on the pallet, its not essential, but closely as possible gives the best results. Applying Pallet Tape Step 3: After your tape is ready to be applied full your can either use the roll itself or your hands and press down and outward from the center of the pallet to give the first contact of the tape smoothing it out. Wrap the 1-2 inches of over under the pallet pressing firmly to give them good contact. The harder your press the better as the tape relies on contact with the pallet. Step 4: Now that the tape has its first contact on the pallet take your squeegee and remove all air bubbles that may have occurred when applying the tape first. Press firmly and look closely because air bubbles will alter the look of the print and the less air bubbles the better. You pretty much don’t want any. Keep working until you get them all out if needed you can use your box cutter again to open the air bubbles up and work the tape onto the pallet again. Step 5: Finally with all the air bubbles out get your glue and pour about a 1-3 inch circle of glue in the middle of the pallet, grab your roller or rag or sponge and apply an even coat of glue over the entire pallet including the sides. Once all the glue is evenly distributed you can sit back let it dry and get ready to print. Good luck! Posted in Screen Printing Tip Of The Day | Tagged custom made t shirts, custom tshirts ny, new york city shirt, screen printing brooklyn, screen printing nyc | Comments Off Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Artwork Preparation Posted on August 19, 2013 by admin With having a great print comes many steps and preparation. Besides actually printing the shirts, applying the emulsion, or burning the screen it’s necessary to have good quality artwork. Many customers tend to come in with hand drawn images or very low quality images that are pulled from the web (which usually contain a watermark). These images are usually at 72 dots per inch or even lower, which is almost always going to come out distorted when printed. One of the most common images customers supply is a 72 dpi multi color jpeg file which has many fades and colors! This is by far the worst mess to start breaking down, that’s why you are better off creating artwork from scratch, or have this type of professional artwork supplied to you. Files should always be at least 300dpi and should generally be scaled to size. Since our film size is 13 x 19 inches we always make our canvas size 13 x 19 at 300dpi. This insures the design to come out very smooth with no crackled edges. In addition you want to try and not stretch anything your image. So for example if you are looking to put a brown horse in your image at roughly 6 inches wide, draw it at 6 inches wide – not 2 inches then stretch it. Stretching usually throws off the image and causes for distortion of pixels. In addition you want to try to vector all shapes and text. This can be done on photoshop by right clicking the layer and pressing convert to shape. (On illustrator all shapes are automatically vectored) Once you have your file set correctly, design your image and you are good to go! If the customer is looking for a real sharp and nice print, they should have no problem spending an extra few bucks on design work. Posted in Screen Printing Tip Of The Day | Tagged Brooklyn screen printing, Custom shirts in Brooklyn, custom shirts ny, screen printer in brooklyn | Comments Off Screen Printing Tip Of The Day: Aligning A Multi-Color Job Posted on August 18, 2013 by admin Aligning a multicolor screen print job sometimes seems complicated, but can be bet easy if done correctly. Aligning the multiple screens is crucial for obtaining a good multi color print. The first parts starts on Adobe Photoshop (or whichever image editing software you are using). After you have separated your colors into separate layers and overlaid them with black ink, align them all to the part of the film you want them printed on. I suggest grouping them before moving them, this way they will not move out of registration. Then in the custom shapes tool, you will see a shape that looks like a bullseye with some cross hairs, select it and make 4 of them (preferable the same size, I just copy and paste he same one 4 times). You want to place one in the top center, bottom center and in be middle on both sides. Once the films are printed and images are burned on to the screens (make sure to put all the films in the same area on the screen before exposing) you can begin aligning the screens on the press. The next step has to do with squaring up the screen on the press and this can be done by one of two methods. You can either use a physical t square and place it on the pallet while aligning the screens above it, or use the t square to draw a line down the middle of the pallet and a few going horizontal. I personally prefer drawing the lines, but either should work. You can then use the registration marks that were made on Photoshop (which are burned on the screen) to align the screen to the lines drawn on the pallet or to the t square that’s placed on the pallet. The center registration marks align with the center line drawn on the pallet and the horizontal ones align with the horizontal lines on the pallet. Once you do the same for all the colors you are ready for a test print. If any adjustments are necessary, you can do so using the micro-registration system on your press.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 19:40:42 +0000
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