Screen printing allows you to put nearly any monochrome design on nearly any piece of clothing.
Screen printing is an easy hobby to learn and an inexpensive way to express your personal creativity. With the correct paint, a prepared screen and a small squeegee, a hobbyist can imprint a design on anything from T-shirts to stationery. Hobbyists soon learn, however, that keeping the printing area clean and keeping the design positioned in the identical place is key to producing quality batch printing. Building a hinged screen printing rig makes the job much easier.
Instructions
1. Fasten two hinge clamps to one side of a work table. Position the hinges about two-thirds of the width of your screen apart. The table should be large enough that your screen and the articles to be printed will have room to spare.
2. Clamp the printing screen into the hinge clamps with the printing side down. The screen should rest flat on the table when down.
3. Place the table so that the side with the clamps is about two inches from a wall. When you lift the screen, its free bottom rail should securely lean against the wall with no risk of falling back down on the table.
4. Tape one edge of an acetate sheet flush to the left or right side of the table. Use strong tape to secure the acetate, which you will be able to lift with the taped edge as a hinge. Your screen should now be able to flip up and down in a vertical direction, while your acetate flips up and down horizontally, to the left or right.
5. Trim the acetate so that it extends no more than two inches beyond the far edge of the screen. The acetate should be large enough to occupy all the table area that the screen overlays when down.
6. Lower the screen until it is almost horizontal, but place a roll of tape or a scrap of wood under the bottom edge. Add the ink to the screen in this position.
7. Remove the roll of tape or wood and lower the screen to the acetate. Print your screen design directly on the acetate then flip the screen out of the way.
8. Place one of the items to be printed underneath the acetate. Move it under the acetate until the printed image on the acetate is in the correct position on the item to be printed. Mark some guidelines, such as the position of the shoulder seams, on top of the acetate with a marker. The acetate will now serve as a positioning template for the items to be printed.
9. Start printing. Lift the acetate sheet out of the way and drop the screen onto the item to be printed.
10. Lift the screen, put another item down, then flip the acetate on top of it. Position the item according to the markings on the acetate. Raise the acetate and lower the screen to print the second item. Repeat until your print batch is complete.
Tags: your screen, acetate sheet, edge screen, hinge clamps, item printed