Section C – Step-by-Step Instructions for Screen Printing
using the teeshirtprinters.com single color press

Step Five – Dry (cure) the plastisol

Not much to say here other than this – ink cures at 320° and cotton will burn at 480°. You see the dillema. Cotton will start to smoke just before it scorches, so watch for smoke and if you see any, pull the heat gun back and let everything cool before starting again.

Ink will change in appearance when it cures, though it is difficult to describe – you’ll know it when you see it. To check for ink curing, you can buy fancy laser devices from Ryan’s for $150 or less, but for the beginner, use the pull test. If the ink cracks when you stretch it, then it isn’t cured. Fully cured plastisol will stretch with the shirt because it is part of the shirt.

Also keep in mind that plastisol will basically never dry until it reaches 320°. You must have a dryer to use plastisol, even if it is just the heat gun from Home Depot. An alternative is to use water based or solvent based inks. Water based are harder to work with and prone to color bleeding in addition to being less durable. Solvent inks are toxic, often flammable, and not made for textiles – they are used for printing on plastic like yard signs, etc.

Step Six – Show off your first successful screen printing job!

You may want to wash the shirt several times to really stress test the ink curing. At any rate though, you’ve just printed a t-shirt. You should be feeling pretty darned cool right about now!

Step Seven – Clean up, save or reclaim screen

Cleanup. Here is a quick, relatively non-messy way to clean up…
1. Use cardboard to card out any unused ink. It is up to you if you save the ink or not – hobbyists usually do, professionals usually don’t. If it doesn’t have contaminants in it, I say save it. If there is any foreign stuff in it though, it can damage the screen and ruin the mesh, or simply cause problems with ink not getting through the screen. It is your call, just remember, sometimes trying to save too much money will end up costing more.
2. Put some newspaper over the platen and old rags on top of that. Lower the screen and spray or pour ink degradent on. Use a rag to scrub lightly. Lift the screen and remove the rags, which should be full of most of the ink. The newspapers will be wet – drop the screen over them and scrub again.
3. Remove the screen from the press and spray it out with water (even your shower will be OK for this). Not all the ink will be gone, so don’t kill yourself trying to get it 100% clean – ink degradent is a ‘bulk’ cleaner, ink wash is a ‘final’ cleaner. Return to your work area and use rags and newspaper to clean out the last of the ink with ink wash. If you only have ink wash, just use it like ink degradent and follow the steps above. You’ll use a lot more ink wash this way.
4. Rinse the screen well in water again. Visually inspect the open areas of the stencil and give extra attention to any area that appears to have ink in it once the screen is dry.
5. Use ink wash or degradent to clean everything – ink spatula, squeegee, the floor… treat that squeegee like gold and get it really, really clean! I simply cannot overstate how much trouble poor cleanup causes. It may save you two minutes to do a crappy cleanup, but it will make every job after that take twenty percent longer. Do not, just simply refuse to, skimp on cleaning your tools and equipment.

OPTIONAL STEPS – RECLAIMING YOUR SCREEN

6. Now, if you don’t want to save the stencil, you can ‘reclaim’ the screen and use it again and again. If you do reclaim the screen, you aren’t saving the stencil – it is gone forever. You will have to re-coat a screen and burn it again if you ever redo the design. Go to the car wash again, with a spray bottle filled with emulsion remover.
7. Spray the emulsion remover on both sides of the screen and wait a minute or two for it to soak in. Spray both sides again and wait ten seconds, then feed the car wash…
8. Direct the high pressure spray into the mesh until you’ve blown out all the old emulsion. Leftover emulsion, for some reason, becomes harder and harder over time. If you don’t wash it out now, you probably never will. If you had runs or drips in the emulsion you will just now begin to understand what I said earlier: Drips – Bad.

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