My first screen print

I’m taking a screen printing class at the design school that I work for. This is my first print.

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Oh, that looks great. I didn’t know you could reliably get lines that thin looking clean

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Love this so much Steve…and also the design.

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Just saying if you sold these, I’d be in for one :slight_smile:

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I posted on a couple of Facebook groups and a few dozen people have requested shirts. Sadly, I don’t own the rights to the line drawing but I’ve had so many requests that I’m going to create a new design with either a PD image (if I can find one) or draw one from scratch so I can sell it. I’ll let you know…

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Nice! I would like to print some t-shirts. I have done some printing a year ago but I wasn’t as successful as you are. Would you mind sharing your secrets? :slight_smile:

No secrets. I just created image and had it printed on the transparency. I coated the screen with photo emulsion and, after it dried, exposed it and washed it. After it dried I ran a few test prints on scrap cloth to prime the screen and then printed a couple of t-shirts.

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There were a few really thin lines that did not print - crosshatching on the knurled knobs and threads on the height adjustment rod.

Mastery is to set the right light (type, distance) and exposure time to harden enough but not too much.
I would like to know how did you set these variables.

At the school we have a light table that someone built a few years ago consisting of 8 3-foot, 30W florescent black light tubes. The glass platen sits about 4" above the lights. There is a plastic tube sitting on top of the platen connected to a small shop vac that you arrange around the transparency and acts like a vacuum press when the lid is closed.

We use Speedball Diazo Photo Emulsion Kit to coat the screens and expose for 5 minutes.

The transparency was printed with a special graphics printer that prints much more opaque than a conventional laser printer. Two transparencies were printed and sandwiched together to increase the opaqueness of the artwork.

Light Table Tube

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ok, it makes sense. The light table is a gamechanger.

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