How to Set Up a T-Shirt Printer for Screen Printing

Video Transcript

"Hello, this is Mark Kneeskem on behalf of Expert Village and in this clip, I'm going to show you how to prepare the surface for screen printing. First you need a clean, hard, flat surface such as this desk or a table or any hard, flat surface. You need plenty of space to have your materials around you and also to move your screen between prints. I usually start with a towel on the bottom and I tape it down with duct tape at the corners to stretch it out and pull it nice and taut. And then you want to put a layer of tee shirt material or an actual tee shirt over the top of that. That should be your last layer because it's nice and smooth. You want to tape that one down too because you want this to be firm and flat with some give, that's why the towel is underneath because you want it to push up against your screen. You don't want wrinkles in any of this because that could totally ruin your print when you do it the first time. The ink will squirt between the designs if there's a wrinkle because it will cause pressure in there. You want to make sure this surface is big enough for the screen that you're doing and you want to make sure the design is........you want to make sure the surface is big enough for the screen that you're doing. That's kind of a major concern. And that is how you prepare the surface for screen printing."