Not for the Faint of Heart. Not for the Start-Up, Newbie Screen Printer.

This is the first and only screen printing press I have ever owned. I have grown to love it, in spite of it’s many flaws. If I had it to do over again this is probably not the press I would have bought, nevertheless, since I invested deep, deep, deep into this particular machine, it became incumbent upon me to learn it’s many nuances, and flaws, and then workaround them.

Most of them, I eventually discovered, came from many of my own shortcomings, along with a few flawed misconceptions on my part. Some of the problems, however, reside solely in the heart of this machine, which in my opinion, while mechanically sound, could have undergone a few more years of R&D before it was sold with such hype, Continue reading →

Never trust an expert unless (A.) you have first hand knowledge of his/her expertise, or (B.) have enough time and resources to eventually verify (A).

This would have saved me $4000.00 and a huge heartache. We have discussed in other articles the unhealthy levels of my (possibly psychotic) optimism. I may even be Pollyanna herself – in a guy’s body of course. But this was beyond the pail.

It was my SECOND job in service to AAA Screen Printing, and it was huge. Too big for me. I should have said “no!” I knew I should have, even at the time. This isn’t like 20/20 hindsight. This was knowledge at the time I was well in possession of. And yet, “I’ll do my best.” I said instead. I’m sick of regret.

I had in my basement 209, high-quality nylon jackets which were $20 a pop, and I didn’t have the first clue how to properly print them.

I began doing research on the internet, because as we are all well aware of at this point: the internet is a fountain of truth and knowledge which can be trusted almost always. I read and read, and read, and read, until I could read no more, and still didn’t know where to start. I called Ryonet. They were helpful. But they spoke to me as though I were already in the know, and not wanting to sound like an idiot (which any newbie who wants to print $4000 worth of nylon absolutely is) I let the farce stand. They used terms I was only vaguely familiar with. I responded with affirmative answers, and spoke very intelligently about things of which I had no idea.

It began with more screen burning issues. I had finally figured out how to properly coat the screens, but I hadn’t yet fully tested my emulsion. Plus, being fast exposing it is already much more difficult to expose than the dual cure emulsions. With my inexperience it was almost impossible. The first night passed without a single screen, as did the second night with only one of four burned (two colors on two different size jackets). The third night saw more success when I switched to Saatichem, but only a little more. It took me eight screens to get the remaining three I needed.

Night four, I still hadn’t printed a single jacket. I had the jacket clamp. I had the ink, the Nylabond. I had everything but the reassurance that comes with firsthand knowledge of how to do something properly. I had a brain full of garbled knowledge from countless different resources, all describing the same process in vastly different terms, and levels of technicality.

It’s all rather funny now. I was learning how to print one of the single most difficult substrates, nylon mesh, from various vendors and websites. That’s not a terrible way to learn, along with trial and error, time, and a little effort, but when $4000 worth of jackets is on the line, and needed on a deadline, and you have about $20 in the bank… find a better way.

I had the lingering guilt that someone better, someone more experienced needed to be printing these. She, the owner of the company, called again to ask about progress. “I haven’t printed a single jacket.” I said. “I just don’t know how to do it.”

“That’s OK. I have somebody who can help. She’s been screen printing for 20 years. She’s an expert.” I breathed a sigh of relief.

Day five. She arrived. A God-send. An answer to my prayers. An angel who smoked Marlboro’s, and knew exactly how to print my jackets. I can look back now and safely say that God didn’t answer that prayer, and in fact, God was yelling to me to “Turn back! Swallow your pride! This is a disaster, from which I will not protect you!” God was trying to tell me through all those early hardships and mishaps that this job wasn’t right. At the time my motives were all wrong.

I took the job anyway. I hired the lady, Carol, we’ll call her. She printed all 209 jackets. The school they were printed for, upon seeing the job, refused all but one of them. My expert, my optimism had failed.

Part 2 will be up tomorrow.

(If you haven’t already read Part 1) and/or (Part 2)

What I Should Have Purchased Instead:

The whole shabang could have been purchased for well under $1,000, possibly less. That means I over-committed about $9,000 for those keeping track. More if you throw how much the learning curve has cost me. So, with 20/20 hindsight here is what I’ve learned, which will hopefully help you learn the same lesson the easy way.

For Artwork and Film Output:
Corel Draw X3 – Now that X4 is out, the price has come way down on X3. You can get it on Ebay for under $100, and it is darn fine software. If you don’t know how to do artwork then outsource it to someone else (like me) or don’t do artwork. Make it a prerequisite that artwork be finished, and ready to print. This will likely turn away a lot of potential business though.

Film Positive Output:
1 – HP 5000N or likewise laser printer which prints tabloid prints. The 5000N is about 10 years old, but is a workhorse of a printer, and does the job amiably. Print to Vellum. These guys claim to have the best vellum on the market for screen printing, but I can’t vouch for them, as I haven’t tested them yet. I will though. Finally you’ll need to get a container of toner enhancer to finish it off. You spray it on the finished film after its printed. It helps darken the final image. Depending on how successful you are at finding one of these printers either locally, or on Ebay you could pay as low as $20.00 for your printer.

The downside to laser film is, even though its cheap, the vellum can shrink a little (not often) which for tight registration jobs would be very problematic. But, as a new printer you can stay away from super-tight registration jobs until you’re ready for them. A lot of busy, busy shops use this alternative to great effect. One of the biggest shops here in the Valley only recently upgraded to the Epson 4880 to do their film. They built a multi-million dollar shop on the back of an Epson 5500 Laser printer. it’s identical to the printer above, except that it can also print color.

Possible Preferable Alternative: I’ve heard, but have never tried (BUT I WILL) that you can use an Epson printer, such as the new 1400 printer which replaces the Epson 1290, to print to one of the transparent films using regular OEM ink with no RIP, and then darken it with toner enhancer. If that works it would be an excellent alternative to laser for about $300.00. You’d be getting closer the finished RIP quality, and you wouldn’t have any of the vellum shrinkage problems associated with laser and vellum. You can also print your image twice, and then double them up. I have tried this one, and it which works very well. But it’s tricky and a little time consuming, which is why I don’t have it high on the list of alternatives.

The Press

1 Color Press – $100 – $400
The only reason I would have stayed with 1 or 2 color press is registration. This would be plenty for the new screen printer. If you’re serious about starting out with the capability of doing more colors then you can go with one of the 2, 3, 4, 5 or even 6 color presses on the low end. For instance you can get this 4 color, table top-press from Ryonet for about $363 (over $400 after shipping).

But… WARNING! WARNING! Anyone who’s been in the industry for some time will see a tremendous problem with this press almost immediately. No micro-tuning possibility. That means no fine forward back adjustments for tight registration jobs. Personally I would stay away from these until you’ve gotten some experience. I’ve seen one color presses on Ebay for $125.00 after shipping. And for the life of me, I can’t imagine doing even a three color job without micro-registration, let alone a 4 or six color job. That, to me, is insane. I know it’s done. I just don’t know why...

1 – Trial Set of Franmar Chemicals: $67.00 AFter shipping
Click the link to read my article on why I’m one of their biggest advocates. In short. The products work. They’re safe for the whole family.

4-10 – 110-155 mesh Aluminum Screens from poconoscreen.com or silkscreeningsupplies.com (Ryonet). I recommend Pocono for the east coasters, and Ryonet for the west coasters. Although, do the math before you commit to a purchase. Pocono Mt. Screen is hard to beat with their screen prices, and it might be that, even after shipping, you still come out better getting your screens from them. They do all the mounting and stretching in house, and the screens are awesome. You can buy more screens if you like, I’m just doing my best to keep the cost down a bit in this scenario. Appromoximately $90.00 for 4, After Shipping

1 – qt. of Emulsion – Dual Cure.
DO NOT GET THE FAST EXPOSING EMULSION. The learning curve is steep, and it’s too easy to under/over expose, for the newb printer. Call your vendor to discuss this further. I use Saatichem Textil PV (fast exposing- about 45 seconds) emulsion from Pocono, and the Diazo Dual Cure (easier to expose and slower about 5 minutes) from Ryonet. $15-30.

1 – 500 Watt Photographers flood bulb with reflective hood and power mount. My setup cost $30. I got it from my local photographer’s supply outlet. It works perfectly suspended over top of my art shining down.

1 – Gallon of White Quality Ink. Wilflex Super Genesis is my favorite ink. They sell white by the gallon only. The rest of the color gamut you can get in quarts. It’s approximately $60 after shipping. I would only order other colors as you get requests for them. You can buy them all outright in the beginning, but it will run your startup costs up. Wildsidenorth.com is a great place to buy Wilflex Ink. They have a huge, poorly laid out PDF catalog available on their even more useless web site, but they CARRY A LOT OF STUFF, and are extremely helpful.

As an Alternative, Ryonet offers a great line of inks, especially their proprietary blend called Ryopaque. I love it! It is outstanding, and works just as well as the Wilflex Ink. They’re also a little less expensive than Wilflex, which is always good.

Union, W.M Plastics, and Triangle Inks are all very, very good, as well.

4 – Wooden Squeegees
Get varying sizes from 4″ for pockets, and 8-12″ for bigger prints. You can buy more if you like, but again, I’m just detailing what would have been good for me. As for the style, I like wooden Squeegees. But it’s a good idea to line the squeegee with aluminum tape. Wood is porous, so if you get ink on it, it’s crazy hard to get out. Get varying degrees of hardness on your squeegees as some jobs need softer/harder blades than others.

1 – Pressure washer from Wal-mart. $60.00. If you decide you hate screen printing at least you’ll have something useful out of it.

2″ masking tape to tape off the interior wall of the screen, and/or to block out pin holes. $2.00

1 – T-squareit T-square. World’s greatest T-square. $30.00

To cure the ink you have four choices.
-Heat Gun -It’s a joke. Don’t do it. Takes about six minutes per shirt.
-Flash Dryer – Works well. Takes about 30-40 seconds per shirt but is at least $300+ out of pocket.
-Conveyor dryer – Works outstanding, but you can expect to spend low end $1,500.
-THE OVEN IN YOUR KITCHEN CAN CURE T-SHIRTS – it works very, very well. Turn the oven on the 350 dgrees broil, put it the shirt on a cookie sheet for 30-50 seconds. Pull it out and the ink is cured. I’m not kidding. This can be a great way to test the waters without investing in dryer.

In conclusion, there’s probably a lot more you can add to this list and I’m excited to see what you think, so leave comments about your recommendations. But this is a good list and even with shipping you’ll save yourself some bread in the long run. You can get one of the kits from any of the various vendors over the internet including Ryonet, Pocono, Atlas and others, but, in my opinion you’ll do better with the pick and choose method. In the end you’ll probably get a more rounded selection of items.

A.) you’ve seen it, used it, love it, or B.) are prepared to be stuck with equipment that you’re not ready for, or – for lack of a better phrase – just plain sucks.
(Go ahead and Read Part 1 If you haven’t already)

I chose B. Did I say that I love this business? I leased another $5,000 worth of equipment – sight unseen. At this point you’re probably thinking, this guy is not smart. That’s true about a lot of things. But in this case I think naive’ would be a more accurate description. I believed that, with the right equipment, even a novice like myself can make this business work. I had a lot of faith then, and even more now, that this is going to work out for the best. I could argue that it already is, given that you’re now reading a detailed account laid bare, of my many, many mistakes, so you may avoid them yourself. But I was wrong about the equipment. Even with great equipment I’m still a dillweed when it comes to printing. I’ve got a long, long way to go.

Nevertheless I made a $5000 lease-to-own mistake. On top of the $5000 privately purchased mistake in order to meet promises I had made. I can’t say enough by the Riley-Hopkins press. I’m sure in the right hands this machined piece of… wizardry can crank off shirts like nobody’s business. In my hands it sucks. I still haven’t figured out why my jobs keep losing registration. But it’s mine until death, or until the lease ends at which point it will be the problem of my great grandchildren.

Don’t choose B. Go to the vendor’s location. Test the equipment. If you’re a newb, like me, most vendors provide training classes on the equipment they sell, usually for around $400-700 per class. Take them. Yeah I know, it’s $700. Better than $10,000. Especially if you’re not sure this is for you.

Great equipment does not make the great printer. I have a friend who has been doing this for 14 years (Thank God for Randall), and he has a homemade 2 color press which he forged 12 years ago out of 2 lazy-susan spindles, some spare wood, and spring clamps. He refuses to upgrade, not because he’s behind the times, in fact his print results are faster, more dependable, and more consistent than mine. His press cost him $54 to make. In today’s dollars it would come out to about $120.00. I paid $1800 for mine. If you’re keeping score I’m already behind him by about $9,880. His Dryer is awesome though. I’ll tell you about that one in another post.

Don’t think, like I did, that the latest and greatest equipment will help you. It won’t. In fact. It will probably hurt you more than it helps. You need a foundation of knowledge first, which is why I suggest visiting the vendors to give the equipment a test drive.

“But I don’t have the money to take the classes” you say, “and gas is too expensive for me to drive all over the countryside in search of the perfect press. What do I do now?”. Read my final post on the subject and take every word to heart. it’s probably the most sobering and important thing I’ve learned in this process.

Since this is the first post in the start-up category, go ahead and ask yourself these questions: Is screen printing right for me? Am I the right kind of person to go into business for myself? There are a host of other resources that can help you decide whether or not you are the right kind of person to be in business. I have taken all the self-tests and have yet to pass even one of them. So maybe I’m not the right person to help you decide whether or not you are right for the screen printing business.

What I can tell you this: screen printing is a goofy business. It is unique in that it requires mastery of no less than 20 or 30 skills to do properly without having to use an outsource (artwork and film prep come to mind). There is also the actual screen printing process itself, which isn’t that easy to learn either. If you’re still deciding on whether or not you want to do this, and it’s only your third or fourth week of research – keep researching until you have all the information you need. If you’re like me, and feel like this is a divine calling requiring more faith than due diligence – get psychiatric help. Then do more research.

If you’ve already paid the shrink and have still decided, even after hours of therapy that, screen printing is the only business for you, then it’s time to take the plunge. Be fore warned though. This plunge will be a grossly cold, slimy experience if you don’t go in with your eyes wide open to the pitfalls which can kill you as a startup.

Among the first considerations for you as a newbie printer is this – equipment. It can make you or break you, but not in the ways you’ve magined. A lesson, like most I have learned, which came by virtue of the hardway.

Proper Equipment Will Make Or Break You. Don’t Let it Break You

“Beau! We’re selling all of our equipment! Do you want to buy it?” Those were the words that were said to me by the company I do artwork for, moments before I made the final decision to take my own frightening plunge into the emotionally unbalanced world of screen printing. I wish I’d never heard those words. More importantly, I wish I’d never said “Wow! Sure!”.

At that moment in time I didn’t even qualify as a novice screen printer. I had never stroked ink onto a shirt. I had never coated, burned, messed up and reburned a screen. I had never set up a two color job where you have approximately two inches of screw-up area before having to burn at least one screen again (2 minutes if you have a coated screen – 45 minutes if you don’t – 15 minutes if you have an expensive, climate controlled drying wrack). I had never loaded a registration job, not even one. I had never dealt with a screen clogging issues. I had never improperly cured ink onto a shirt. I had never destroyed $4000 worth of nylon jackets. I had never smashed a screen after hours of unsuccessful exposure attempts. I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I, probably like many of you, watched a few videos on youtube and figured how hard can it be? I know the answer to that question now.

A.) Equipment – Don’t Buy A Used Screen Printing Equipment Privately Unless You Know What It Is tha Buying.

Had I known then what I know now I never would have bought any of that equipment. It’s not just old – it’s unusable old, and none of the most important
equipment, the press or the conveyor dryer, will fit into the space I’m using as my print shop. Worse, I over-paid for it. I agreed to pay $5000. It’s worth about $800-generously.

What I have since learned is that the company which originally made the press is no longer in business. So all the broken parts which turned up are – sooprise! sooprise! – broken forever. Most of the ink I got from them is pretty good, but a lot of it had been contaminated with nylabond by a disgruntled employee. So now I’m afraid to use most of it, and should probably get rid of all but the unopened containters.

I did get a few good things out of the deal, a great pressure washer, a nylon jacket clamp (which by no means qualifies me to print nylon as you’ll find out), a worn out Hat-Champ, which still works in spite of the rust which covers all of it. I got a decent light table which I never use. About 80 screens (10 of which are NOT warped). I also got some shelving, and other miscellaneous stuff. For what I paid that’s not good enough. The press and the dryer, the heart of the deal, and both too big for my space, which is totally my fault.

Bottom line: I was sold. And I’m an easy sell as it is. If had known then what I know now, I could have gotten so much more, so much better, for so much less.

In a pickle, committed to this business personally and financially, I did what I had to. I bought NEW Screen Printing Equipment! The answer to my prayers? Yes? Maybe?