Take that and then print 40 shirts per hour on a small press or 100 shirts an hour on a larger screen printing press and you're making $120-$400 per hour! Not too bad for pushing ink huh! There are a few things to keep in mind during the printing process. So that means each shirt you are profiting between $3-$4. Depending on the image size and type of the wholesale t-shirt your cost on this may be $2. Typically a 1 or two color shirt sells screen printed for $5-$6 wholesale. Screen printing a shirt actually goes pretty fast when you get all setup and the opportunity to make some good money is definitely there. Once you think your screens are in registration, you complete a test print typically on an old shirt or a printing test pellon to ensure everything lines up. Using a press with joystick registration or micro registration is extremely helpful when printing fine detail multiple color jobs. If you are printing a multiple color job, you'll need to register the colors together in so that they match correctly when you print all of them at once on the shirt. Right before you clamp your screens into your press you tape off the edges of your frame with screen tape which helps keep the screen and shirt clean during printing. Of course if you have more color arms you have the ability to print more colors at the shirt at one time, likewise if you have a higher a mount of printing stations, you can print faster. A screen printing press consists of a base that holds you printing platen and a number of color arms (depending on how many colors your press is.) A manual press can be as small as a 1 color 1 station, or as large an 8 color 8 station. After the screen is exposed, simply rinse it with water, the soft part that was not exposed rinses out leaving that area of the mesh open so you can print ink through it! The exposure process is complete and your almost ready to start screen printing shirts! Set up your screen printing pressĪlright, it's almost go time, but before you start printing you need to setup the screens on your screen printing press. This is why its so important to ensure you have a very black film, if your film is only partially black, it will let light in during the exposure process. The screen hardens to light but the positive or black area of the film blocks the light from reaching the emulsion, this leaves that area of the emulsion unexposed or soft. After the screen is coated and dried, you get your film positive, align it to the screen, and expose it with a screen printing exposure unit or light for an allotted amount of time. Emulsion is light sensitive, so when you coat the screen it is typically done in a darkroom that has special light safe yellow bulbs in it. Before you coat the mesh, it is cleaned with a special screen printing degreaser so that the emulsion sticks to it. The mesh holds the image by using a film or emulsion that is coated onto the mesh. The mesh holds the image onto the screen and lets ink pass through when you by pressing it with a squeegee. A screen printing frame consists of a wood or aluminum frame stretched with polyester mesh on it. Ok, you have the art, you printed your films, now it's time to make the screen. It's very important for your film positive to be as black a possible, we'll explain why in the next step. There are many ways to make film positives whether it's going to your local print shop, hand drawing your image, or purchasing a compatible printer for use at home. A film positive transparency is basically like an overhead transparency (remember those from back in the day), what ever you want to print on the t-shirt, you print out in black ink on the film positive. Once your artwork is created and separated, the next step is creating a film positive in order to burn your image into a silk screen. Most screen printers use CorelDraw or Photoshop as their artwork program in order to separate and clean up the artwork for screen printing. When you screen print a shirt you print one color at a time, so if you're artwork is multiple colors, you need a way to separate those colors so you can create different screens for your design. When thinking about artwork keep in mind, garbage in = garbage out, so the better quality of artwork you start out with the better screen prints you are going to get on your t-shirt. Whether you create it, you copy it, or a customer brings it to you, screen printing all starts with artwork. To print a shirt you of course have to have something TO print onto the shirt. Check out this easy to follow screen printing how-to guide to find out what you need to know on how to screen print.
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