SCREEN PRINTING PRESSES

Nearly all printers begin with simple, color-blocked prints, laying down one to three colors at a time. While there’s certainly plenty of money to be made, and plenty of designs to be made, by printing spot colors, many screen printers look to advance their skills and try new techniques.

If you’re reading this, it’s time to move up to a larger manual screen printing press, add one to your screen printing arsenal, or replace an older, worn out model.

When shopping for a screen printing press, there are many variables you’ll have to take into account. One of the most important decisions to make is how many colors and stations you want.

Is your screen printing shop ready to upgrade to an automatic screen printing press? If you’re consistently struggling to keep up with customer demand on your current manual setup, or if you’ve hit the point where you feel you need to increase your staffing, it’s probably time to start seriously considering an automatic press.

An automatic screen printing press is an exciting addition to any shop’s production floor. Automatic presses speed up production time, so press runs that used to take a day now only take hours. However, screen printing shops that adopt automatics shouldn’t be too fast to retire their manual screen printing presses.

There’s an old adage: “Keep your eye upon the doughnut and not upon the hole”. Of course, with screen printing it’s sort of reversed, as it’s most important to keep your eye on the holes in your screen mesh.

When it comes to screen frames, there are loyalists in all camps. Some screen printers love the old-school feel, low price and sustainability of wood. Others rely on the light, sturdy technology of aluminum frames, and still others swear by the control and print crispness that come with retensionable screens.

When you think of screen printed products, shirts are probably the first item that comes to mind. But you definitely shouldn’t stop there! There’s a whole world of different materials waiting to be screen printed, and expanding your offerings will help you attract new customers and keep old ones coming back for more.

A screen printing shop needs a good air compressor, one that can fully power its screen printing presses and other equipment. Without the right air compressor, your machine can jolt and bounce. That can affect the quality of your prints and cause undue wear on your screen printing press.

When you’re running a small business, you need to take advantage of the technology and techniques that will help you increase efficiency while still providing quality products to customers.

Feeling squeezed by the restrictions of a standard-sized screen print? If your creativity can’t be contained in your usual print size, you may want to give oversized printing a try. To really push the envelope, you can print whole backs and fronts of shirts, or even try all-over printing.

Blurry prints. Smudged or rough ink. Improper registration. Images that wear away when washed. As a screen printer, these are some of the common problems you work to avoid. Every misprint costs money, and problem prints that make it into your customers’ hands can damage your business’s reputation.