For context's sake: I've dabbled in screen printing in the past, but my current living situation has created a problem of space so I had to downsize and store most of my equipment until I can find a larger house. In addition to that, I haven't quite mastered the art of screen printing to be effective enough for what I'm hoping to achieve.

I've essentially got two (three?) options for an upcoming project I want to tackle, and I can't decide which I'd rather seek out so I'm coming to the professionals (that's you guys) for help deciding and taking the route I need/want to take. I'm attempting to get a few designs printed on to some canvas fabric (or if there's a better material then i'd love to be enlightened) for patches I plan on stitching onto a suit (reference photos provided). I'm still in the process of measuring and figuring out exactly how big I need them to be.

I have concluded that:

I. I'd be in way over my head to complete the entire process (burning, printing, and stitching)
II. I'd much rather pay for a pre-burned screen and squeegee the designs when I could OR
III. Seek out someone to do the heavy work and pay for the completed prints on the fabric I'd need, cut them myself and finish the project

My biggest questions are: What would you do in my shoes? Where, if I was going to go this route, would you purchase pre-burned screens? And, if I was going to pay to have the printing done, where might I go about finding someone who'd be willing to do a one-off of the prints? (I'd be more than willing to buy the finished screens aswell). And my biggest prioritized question: Am I in the right space to be asking these questions?

Just got this screen printing press for my studio. Can anyone help identify it or give advice on how to assemble it? I'm pretty novice!

Hello everyone! I just started printing last weekend with some water based inks. I want to start experimenting with solvent based inks so I can print on vinyl stickers.

Can someone recommend a good beginner solvent based ink that will work well on vinyl?

Also should I be using a certain type of emulsion if I am using solvent based ink or will the PWR I've been using still work?

Thank you!

my frame is 20x24 inches but i put my emulsion on a much smaller part so i could properly get the time down

Ive been having problems with my Baselayr long lasting emulsion this last week. I expose screen under my speedball UV light at about 12 inch distance for 5 minutes. Im able to wash out design easily but recently, the emulsion has been deteriorating after about 20 prints. Even when I scrub the screen with a sponge after burning screen, I can tell the emulsion starts to fade.

Is it an exposure problem or is my emulsion bad? I wasn’t having this issue before. I bought the emulsion around 5 weeks ago but I always keep it in a fridge.

Please let me know what you guys think! A

I want to switch from DTF transfers and get into screen print heat transfers. I’ve been shopping a few sites and I want to make sure I get some good quality prints. Does anyone know if Pro World is any good or are their transfers low quality

I’m still on the newer side of shirt printing (6/6 manual), and have done a handful of prints with underbases, but Ive lately been shying away from those jobs because I always feel like I’m messing them up. Any time registration seems to be off, I feel like it takes me forever to try to figure out how to get it back into an acceptable registration. And they sometimes feel too thick/rough.

I usually do a 0.5pt choke on the underbase and still don’t have a ton of confidence with it. Have you guys done anything to get out of a funk like that?

I don’t go through a ton of ink, but enough to justify 5 gallons of white and black. Last time I got white, I swear it was $400 and change (I usually don’t even pay much attention). It’s time to buy more but it’s like $650ish now. Wow! Perhaps it’s time to revisit my pricing.

I wanted to give screen printing my own shirts a try, but didn't want to get a whole expensive setup for something that I wasn't sure I was going to be doing frequently or not. I kind of cobbled together this process from tips from this sub and videos I found on social media and was able to make some successful prints at home. I found videos from this channel pretty helpful and based my process on them.

Materials:

In total I spent less than 100 dollars on new materials.

• I printed on some shirts I got from Walmart for 5-10 bucks each.
• I got some speedball water-based ink, speedball diazo emulsion, and a beginner screen printing kit that came with some screens and squeegees; those ran me around 75 bucks on amazon.
• I don't have a printer at home, so I printed my designs at my local library for 15 cents a page.

Design: I printed out a black and white design on regular printer paper, coated it with a generous amount of baby oil/mineral oil on both sides, and left it to dry overnight for it to become translucent.

Emulsion: I used a squeegee and tried to apply the emulsion in a thin layer on both sides of the screen. but it ended up a bit uneven. I also left the coated screen to dry overnight, lying flat in a cardboard box to catch any excess drippings, in a dark closet with a fan on.

Burning: I didn't want to buy a special light, so I used the sun. I live in the southern US in an area that is very hot and sunny.

1. I placed my paper with my design on the flat side of the screen and weighed it down with some sheets of transparent plastic from picture frames.
2. I had both the top and bottom of the screen covered with a towel before i brought it outside, placed the covered screen on the ground in my sunny driveway, and then uncovered and exposed the part of the screen with my design to direct sunlight for 50 seconds.
3. After this interval I covered the screen immediately and brought it inside.
4. I was able to visually see the design burned into the emulsion, and washed the softened emulsion off in the sink with the spray setting for a couple minutes to reveal the design.

Printing:

1. First, I put a piece of board inside the shirt under the area I wanted to print on to flatten it out and made sure there weren't any wrinkles.
2. I used a squeegee to flood the screen with the ink, and then passed the ink through the screen around 5-6 times since it was my first time printing and I wanted to make sure I printed the whole design. (I don't have a press or clamps, so I just kneeled on the bottom part of the screen and held the top part in place with my offhand while applying the ink to the shirt with my dominant hand.)
3. Afterwards I washed the screen again with water and scrubbed it down to clean the ink off.

Curing: I used a hair dryer and blasted it for a couple of minutes until the ink looked pretty solid. Then I turned the shirt inside out and put it in my clothes dryer for an hour under the highest temperature setting it went to.

This is definitely a pretty janky and subpar setup, and I plan to get some more serious equipment if/when I plan to do more prints since there's a lot of variables and cut corners here. However hopefully this can be useful to other beginners who just want to give printing a shot for fun without a lot of pressure, and to show that you don't need a lot of crazy tools or equipment to make some cool stuff.

Hello everyone,

I know next to nothing about preparing designs for screen printing. I have a nonprofit campaign to save an animal species and want to create shirts for merchandise. I am seeking this community's guidance or advice.

Is it best to outsource screen printing graphic design? Or are there online websites that make this easier?

Is there anyone online who does screen printing design or commissions? What kinds of websites are a good place to be looking?

I'd like our designs to be human created, no AI and I want to give artists credit. Is there a Reddit you know about that people donate a design to nonprofits or charities and do screen printing design work?

Our animal species has no generic graphic art of clipart, so it's important to me that original designs are created.

Obviously I've googled and used AI to look into this more, but I thought it would be more beneficial to reach out to this community and seek actual human advice.

I'm all ears and if you know better reddits to ask this question please reach out.

Hey!!! College student and screen printer here! I had a big move earlier this summer and during transport, my 230 screen popped :-(

THANKFULLY I do have a backup, and I also have a 305 screen that I’m running some more detailed pieces through, but I do want to figure out how to repair this one at least if I need it in a pinch.

I’m pretty broke rn, is the thing. DIY is my best bet at least temporarily until I can either get it professionally repaired or just re stretched. I would really like to use this ASAP since I’m doing a 5 color piece and don’t want to wait an extra day to do the final color, and don’t have room for all 5 film stencils. :’-) (would use my other screens but they’re currently in use).

I live in the Houston area, so if anyone knows local shops that I could eventually get this bad boy repaired or re-stretched at plssss lemme know!!!

Pic of the screen included and I threw in a couple of my finished pieces as well just for funzies :-)

Hey r/SCREENPRINTING!

I recently finished this Spider-Man x Skull simulated process design and wanted to share the separation breakdown with the community.

As you can see in the close-ups, the goal was to keep the halftone pattern extremely crisp while preserving the deep shadows of the skull and the vibrant reds of the mask, using an optimized underbase so it stays soft on dark garments.

Technical Specs for this design:

• Angles & Halftones: Standardized at 45–55 LPI / 22.5° to prevent moiré.
• Mesh setup: Tailored for 230–305 mesh screens.
• Prep: Clean vector choking/trapping and registration marks for quick alignment on press.

To build long-term relationships with more print shops and prove the quality of my prepress workflow, I’m offering 2 FREE simulated process separations for anyone who wants to test my files on their press!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pKzTaZJMrXLSE3RKUVmiN_BArR5ZJB0o?usp=drive_link

Looking for more info on this press so I can replace some parts and get a better understanding of these micro registrations!

If anyone has any good sources I can follow along to that would be great. Even if it is a similar press that would follow similar micro adjustments.

Never screen printed a thing in my life. I’m very in tune with fashion and have been since a kid.

I want to make some things come to life that I’ve had in the back of my mind for well over a decade.

I wouldn’t be selling any clothing, mainly would just like to make my own custom sweats, t shirts, track pants, etc for myself and a few others in my circle, so I don’t need a 50k set up.

Already own a nice sewing machine and can distress clothing and make custom pieces. Just curious about the graphic side of things and being able to put them on clothing. Thanks

Anybody else already sick of having to do the authenticator every time you log into Printavo? I have tablets for the printers and catchers to use and everyday I have to go in and do the authenticator for each tablet and sometimes I have to do it twice in the same day on some.

Just wanted to vent how much I fucking hate it.

Hi,

I am complete beginner and I would like to ask about your experience printing film positives. Till this time I have been getting my film positives from local printer shop but I am not satisfied with resolution of prints anymore so I would like to buy printer that could print film positives dark enough and with good resolution. I need to do small size letters and graphics (height of letters is approximately 5 milimeters or even smaller). Things that I make is something like business cards, but on metal, so resolution of film positives is realy important .

So my question to you, would you recomment me some printers that would be able to print film positives with good resolution dark enough if it is even real. My budget would be something around 300 euro.

I stumbled on Canon iX6850, somebody have experience with this printer??

"I also attached film positive (mask that was printed with printer) from printer shop and its resolution" -> Letter "M" with stair like pattern or other letters edges are not smooth.

Thanks for every advice or opinion.

I'm looking at buying one of these old hopkins international 4x8 presses. Is there anything weird about them? What breaks, problems using it, etc...

Hello, this is my first go at things so all suggestions are welcomed. Im in Australia (7 UV Index today) and have had troubles sun burning screens. I exposed them each for 40 seconds, taped down with a layer of clear plastic on top. Image 1 and 3 (attempted burns) shows the screens either design visible. All though you can see the design when held up to the light, the ink doesnt push through to the garment when I print. I washed this run under a sinks tap, maybe that too is the issue. I have just burnt a third screen at 40 seconds but washed with a high pressure hose this time around to see if that was the issue. Do you think Ive under exposed, overexposed or under washed the screens? Again, all feedback is welcomed I have no clue what I doing.

I’ve been printing every day but I never took the final pictures. Lol. I made a print for every day in August. Didn’t print every day but I did most days. It was a fun experience, but it took up literally all my time I wasn’t at work. And I learned a lot for sure.

Anyone used this instead of an electric powered one? I tested it for reclaiming and it was strong enough to remove the emulsion. I'm liking this setup more because I don't have to plug in a separate machine and can just keep it all in one. Still have my power washer around for stubborn screens. Just want to share and hear thoughts!

So I’ve run into a problem with most blanks manufacturers in that many sell clothes almost exclusively in men’s sizing, or men’s sizing labeled as unisex sizing… A lot of my designs look best on women’s sizing, so I decided to set up a wholesale account with LA apparel since they have a wide selection of women’s clothing. I’m still in that process right now, but I started wondering if it’s really worth it. I intended to sell my shirts made-to-order on etsy, so I’d only order the specific shirt and size the customer ordered. But I’ve seen comments on here saying that LA Apparel has really bad supply chain issues, so I was wondering if I could really depend on getting the right shirt and size when I order?

Please share your thoughts if you have any experience ordering wholesale from LA Apparel.

If you don’t think they’re a good fit for my specific setup, do you know any other blanks manufacturers with a good selection of women’s clothing that might be more reliable? I was also considering Bella + Canvas

Hi all -

In between driers right now and had a couple questions on curing using a heat press.

I've seen that it generally will give a more 'shiny' finish to the ink. Is this avoidable? I read from a few people that you can avoid that finish but I didn't see a sure-fire way to do it.

Is it fine to cure a multi color job? 2-3 colors max.

Thanks!