The topic of screenprinting came up about a week ago and that sparked my interest. I have been doing shirts with the EconoPrint material from Stahls, but larger runs are not competitive.

After reading the post and researching the internet about building equipment, materials, etc., I thought maybe I'd give it a try. I don't think I'll have any problems building the press or exposure unit, however, I do have a question for you folks already screenprinting.

What specific inks do you use?

I think for coroplast, bumper stickers, etc., the Nazdar inks look good (I think they were the 9700 series). I realize they are toxic, but I haven't found any other inks that look as good.

As far as inks for T-shirts, I'm at a stand-still. I can't seem to decipher all of the brands and types out there.

I would prefer to use a waterbase ink for all types of printing, but I'm not sure if they are very good in screenprinting.

Any suggestions? I would prefer if you could give me exact brand names and series for both shirts and non-porous surfaces.

Thanks folks. Have a great weekend.

Thats a tall order.

For t-shirts, I use Union brand inks. For t-shirts, I like to use either Hanes Beefy-T's or Gildan Ultra's. I would stay away from water-based inks until you get more experience. Trust me on that one. You would do better to learn about textile screen printing using plastisol inks instead.

As for inks for non-porous surfaces, you have a problem. Not all inks work on all surfaces. Go to http://www.nazdar.com/inklink/InkLink-MainPage.asp for more info.

You will also find that screen printing t-shirts is much easier and more forgiving than on "graphic stock" (decals, metal, plastics, and so on).

Check out www.usscreen.com . You can find a series of books and videos to better educate yourself. Also, check out www.richardgreaves.com . Richard is extremely good at clean simple explanations of what can be complex.

You can use waterbased for textiles, and there is some good stuff available from nazdar and others. However, plastisol is the way to go: easy to work with, and it's the industry standard.

My advice:

If you are going to print textiles, don't build your press. Buy one. A homemade press is fine for limited sign production and decals, but you will be dissapointed with a home made press when it comes time to do shirts. Presses can be had VERY inexpensively.

As for the plastisol inks, you need something to cure it with. I'm guessing that you don't want to spring for a conveyor dryer for your limited production, and that's fine. Just get a good 18x18" or larger flash cure unit. They can be had relatively inexpensively as well.

Union is good stuff, get some of their deals on ink at www.unionink.com .

The last order I gave him was a run of 4 color prints, 6 dozen shirts. He had them finished within the afternoon.. he has an awesome 12 station automatic press that just cranks out shirts.

For white ink only we use Wilflex. It has just a slight "puff" additive to give you a good opaque
print.

We are about to embark on the world of "automatic
printing". We also use the XpresScreen system for short runs.