Screen Printing

Just wondering if anyone has any screen printing experience??

suey71

hi there. yes i was a screenprinter with p&d for 7 years, and previously another 7 with smaller places mostly hand bench and pos. but stopped screenprinting about 6 years ago. so maybe a little rusty. why?

do you think there's much money in screen printing t-shirts these days? I see basic machines for £300. is it all about the design/slogan??

suey71

you could get a machine for 300. has to be [EMAIL="cr@p"]cr@p[/EMAIL]. is it a 1 colour or a carassel? how much for the ink? sqeegees? screens? getting stencils made up.? washing stencils off/ washing ink off? you'll need a big shed, and somewhere for the waste to go. you'll need racks to dry your prints before you wrap them. the neighbours will DEFINATELY complain about the smell of fumes. unless you go down the u.v road and get special inks. then you need to get special everything else. i did this for about 2months about 15 years ago for a company and hated it. it wasnt really screenprinting, its easy to do on a v.small scale just need the right gear. if you want to do it start off with a 1 colour set up. but seriously the smell is really bad its not something you could do in your bedroom. if i didnt change your mind ring millers and see if they sell second hand machines, they sell everything you'll need. best of luck to you. where are you going to sell the t shirts?. if you have a market for them you can sell them. you could always get a proper t-shirt printing company to print your designs and then sell them yourself. this is what a lot of t-shirt sellers do at festivals/concerts. good luck.

wixfjord

A very very tough game to make any serious profit on, one of my mates tried it last year and ahd to pack it in, machinery is expensive for the quantities sold. He said the same, get a proper company to print your designs and sell them yourself. What line were you looking at moving into?

wix

wixfjord

wixfjord wrote: »

A very very tough game to make any serious profit on, one of my mates tried it last year and ahd to pack it in, machinery is expensive for the quantities sold. He said the same, get a proper company to print your designs and sell them yourself. What line were you looking at moving into?

wix

Have a good sense of humour and i just have a million ideas for slogans/designs. Would also print for stags/hens etc.

Do you know of any good reputable printers i could use to do my design?

suey71

if you have the slogans and designs, great. then forget about screenprinting the t-shirts and see how much one of those graffic printing machines that they are using in petstop over in blanch to print pets faces on t-shirts are. you can go in to the shop and ask can they print up one of your designs? which they can. then see if its something someone would buy. but use a good quality t-shirt. as for t-shirt companies, i wouldn't know who are the best now. just try the golden pages or google. but if your designs are good then get them protected as its a cut throat business. and shop around and ask for samples of their work. ask can you see thier set up and go in and see the printing being done, then check the quality then and there. good luck.