I thought it would be a good idea to start off by showing an automatic press and break down the tools involved in screen printing a shirt. This will give you some reference for my future posts and give you an understanding of what actually goes into production printing a shirt.
You can see almost all the tools involved in the following picture.
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| Thanks to Serigraphie Hitex Inc for letting me take pics |
A) the automatic press powered by hydraulics.
B) Squeegee attached to a press arm, adjusted for pressure, speed and squeegee angle.
C) Hydraulic powered squeegee press arms. These ones have digital options for print and flood stroke speed, everything else is adjusted manually.
D) Screen attached to the press. Registration and micro adjustments to align each impression to each other is done manually.
E) Tshirt on a platen, attached to an arm that rotates around the press. This shirt still has several colors to be printed before it's done and cured through the dryer.
F) Plastisol ink (the most commonly used ink for garment printing) This bucket has metallic silver ink, the last color being used on this print.
G) A screen coated with a light sensitive emulsion, image already burnt creating the stencil, tapped up and ready for the press. (I believe that screen was just cleaned of ink, it's sitting on the wash bin drip drying. At least you can see the burnt image).
H) Adhesive spray gun (being used). The platen is sprayed with a water soluble light adhesive to keep the shirt in place and affixed to the platen while printing.
I) You can't really see it in this pic but just after the underbase is the flash cure unit. I'll try to get a pic for another post when i have the chance.
J) Aluminum screen frames with images already burned and waiting for the press (these have already been used for a print run and are stored for reprints in the near future).
K) Conveyor oven for curing the ink to the garment. The temperature of the oven is usually set at ~320F
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