This tutorial is a guide on how to set up a silkscreen press and how to print. This guide does not cover absolutely every problem you will encounter; part of making your own press is finding your own solutions. This tutorial is long and not easy, but this is essentially a commercial printing process. If you do choose to do this it takes quite a bit of time and I'm sure you will fail many steps the first time you try them (I know I did). But if you follow this and keep at it you will be able to print professional quality shirts and posters. Please note though this tutorial only covers a single color press, though you can print things with as many colors as you wish it does become very time consuming. If after all that you still want to silk screen your own things, perfect. Let's get started.

Okay the big question now, is how much will it cost to do this? All your costs will be in materials, and by the time it is all said and done you're looking at about $200 (US). The first step in getting materials, is finding a place to get real materials. And by this I mean not buying silkscreen materials from art stores as they are lower quality, don't last anywhere near as long (though this is an okay place to start). You can either just find some place online like silkscreensupplies.com, or even better locate a local supplier; in Portland the main supplier is Midwest who has locations across the country. You will also probably need to go to a hardware store as well for supplies, something like Home Depot will do.

Here is a brief list of what you will need:
-Silk screens
   24"x20" are a good size, as you can fit a lot and they are not too cumbersome. 150 mesh count is good to being with.
-Photo-Emulsion
   This creates the negative stencil when you expose your screen.
-Emulsion scoop
   A very useful tool to coat your screens.
-300 watt light + reflector
   Essential to exposing photo emulsion.
-Pressure washer
   If you have a pressure washer, awesome. But you can use your household shower or sink too...with the right adaptations.
-Squeegee
   Essential to pushing ink through a screen. I recommend 12" to start out with.
-Screen hinges
   Basically these are hinges with 'C' clamps attached, but they work great.
-Ink
   The whole point of all this is to put ink on stuff. There are many types and of course colors to choose from.
-Tape
   Mask your screens so you don't make too big of a mess. It's worth it.
-Spray adhesive
   Adhesive so your substrate does not move around on the platen.
-Substrate
   The proverbial 'stuff' I spoke about under 'ink'. It's what you want to print on.
-Heat gun
   This mainly applies to printing shirts with plastisol inks.
-On-press cleaner
   Varies with what type ink you use, but basically what you need to get ink off your screen.
-Emulsion remover
   Have to clean it off your screens to reuse them.
-Ghost remover
   Gets rid of 'ghosting' that photo emulsion causes. A rather optional product for this.
-Building materials
   Need to build a press to do real printing.
-Platen
   A specially cut piece of wood to put your substrate on.

Construction

The first thing we need to do it build the press. If all you want to do is print posters then this becomes much simpler because of the flat stock, essentially just buy some silk screen hinges and bolt them onto a table and you can be set. But if you want to do shirts I recommend building something that with a platen. From here on out I'm going to treat this like you're building the press to handle primarily tee shirts.

So here is a diagram of what a press should look like in theory. You must note that the bottom of the screen and platen are level, this is one aspect you can't botch. It is also very nice to consider some way to prop the screen half way up when you are changing out shirts. Also consider that you must put a bit of weight on the platen when you are printing, so don't overhang the platen without making a counter weight, or simply building from the center. Personally I built my press with a saw horse from Home Depot, but you could use an old table or about anything. I used screws, epoxy and wood to build my press, I got my platen from a silk screen shop I worked at, but if you own a router this would be cake to build, if you don't have a router then figure out some where to order a platen. If you can make the platen so you can move it or replace it easily then you will be able to register your press better. Make sure to draw up some basic blue prints before you tackle building a press too, so you know what materials you want to buy before hand and also so you have a general guide to build to.
A press does not have to look pretty to print great tee shirts. Here are a couple shots of mine for reference. 01 02 03