SCREEN PRINTING SUPPLIES

If you’ve been thinking about starting your own screen printing business, you’ve likely been wondering just what you need to get your screen printing shop up and running.

Running an efficient screen printing shop starts with reducing your waste. A print shop generates many different kinds of waste, from misprinted shirts to leftover ink and chemicals to cardboard boxes and other containers. And eliminating this waste isn’t always a straightforward process; some screen printing byproducts are potentially hazardous and require special attention. How do you get it all under control?

As the demands of decorating performance wear increasingly cross over into the world of fashion, it’s become necessary to develop new inks for screen printing. Given the strength and extreme stretch of many of these fabrics, it can be difficult to get the desired result, even with special additives. In response to these challenges, a number of ink manufacturers have developed silicone based inks.

There are countless screen printing inks that claim to be «ready for use», but in reality almost all inks require some care before they hit your press. Whether you’re seeking the right consistency, the right color or a special effect, there are proper ways to get your ink ready for printing.

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.

«Green» living has gone beyond a fad and become a part of the modern fabric. While there have been garment brands offering environmentally friendly apparel – and screen printing shops specializing in green printing – for decades, eco-friendly clothing has gone mainstream.

A screen printer needs the right tools, and one of the most important screen printing tools is the squeegee. There are several variables to consider when selecting a squeegee, and it’s important to understand how each affects your prints so you can choose the right squeegee for each job.

As you strive to maintain top quality in your screen printing, one of the most important factors to achieving great looking prints is also one of the easiest to overlook: Your screen tension.

We all know that screen printing with water-based ink brings some challenges. One of the biggest challenges of water-based ink is fighting stencil breakdown during printing.

Most of the time, reclaiming your screen printing screens is a pretty straightforward task. But occasionally you’ll run into an issue that can affect your print quality if not dealt with quickly: ghosting.

All retailers walk a fine line with inventory. You want to have the right goods on hand to meet your customers’ needs in a timely manner, but you don’t want to get stuck with a stockroom full of merchandise that doesn’t sell for months on end. Screen printers are not exempt from this dilemma.

As a screen printer, the last thing you want is an unhappy customer wanting to return items. In another blog post, we shared some tips on how to keep your plastisol prints from washing out. Those tips will go a long way towards keeping your prints vibrant and making them last, but there’s another issue you may run into: dye migration.