Screen Printing Reel

Today, I geared up for mass production and made ... 14 tee shirts!

The jig worked out really well. It was nice to pivot the screen into place knowing it wouldn't slide and smear in the wrong places. It was easy to hold the screen down with one thumb while running the squeegee with the other.

Using cheap, smooth extruded polystyrene foam platen blocks worked out nicely too. I made six blocks, and loaded the tee shirts first (timelapse below). Once I poured the ink, I could work quickly without worrying about drying up the ink.

Here are some timelapses of making the actual prints:

Things I learned:

• There were a couple gaps in the emulsion on my screen, around the edges and in one spot where it was spread a little too thin. I made a few stray marks before catching these and covering them up with masking tape.
• My placement of the tees on the foam platens wasn't always spot on. A few leaning houses, one house whose gutter disappeared, and a couple houses whose peaks poke into the neckband. I should put more care into loading the shirts on the platen blocks.
• Ironing 17 shirts (three more from my first "limited edition" run, before I tried photoemulsion) is really boring. I had to place the iron four times to cover the design, and I let it cook for three minutes at each spot. That's about three and a half hours.

Here are  bunch of finished shirts, drying before they get heat-set with the iron.