Screen printing t-shirts on just one side is pretty easy. I tell you how to do it in my pages here. But screen printing a t-shirt on both the front and the back requires a few more steps.
First I will print one side of the shirt. It doesn’t matter which side. Then I will lay the shirt out to let the ink dry completely. Later, maybe even the next day, I will print the shirt on the other side. It is probably possible to print both sides in short succession, but it would be hard to keep the wet ink from smearing, or coming off on other shirts. I suppose if you have a flash dryer, you could dry the ink enough so that it would be safe. But that’s more of a commercial type operation. Flash dryers are expensive. So print the once side, let dry, then print the other side. Let it dry.
Now that both sides are printed, you need to heat set the ink. I do my heat setting in the oven. When the ink gets hot, it gets soft, and can come off on other stuff. So what I do is lay a clean piece of paper over the dried design on one side. Usually the smaller printed part. Then I will fold the shirt and leave the other printed part face up, not touching anything. This way, if the hot soft ink transfers a little, it will only be to the piece of paper, not to another part of the shirt.
I bought a hand-held heat gun from home depot for $25.00. It works great. When I’m doing multiple color prints, I only have to hit the last color for 45 seconds or so before I press ontop of it. It really works great. You get it in the paint section.
Comment by Bobby — July 23, 2007 @ 1:32 am
Cool! I have thought of trying that, but never have. Thanks for the info!
Comment by Rob — July 23, 2007 @ 6:55 am
i need it ..and thanks
Comment by Dennis — August 11, 2007 @ 2:41 am
I am a Outdoor advertiser and watching the website of Screen printing . It is very helfull to a beginer and and all the details are very helpfull to every body who engage to this trade. By myself also having about 25 years experiance of this trade and having an idea to open up a screen printing equipment showroom in Sri Lanka. So I might be get all the details of your products to introduce to the screen printers in Sri Lanka.
Comment by H.Gamalath — July 19, 2009 @ 11:23 am
Thank for shared!
Comment by Peter — December 11, 2009 @ 11:58 pm
i love your blog !
Comment by art t shirts — December 29, 2009 @ 11:32 pm
very useful information… thanks and keep on posting
Comment by Printing Beetle — March 6, 2010 @ 7:19 am
Hey I have a kit coming tomorrow. I have a two color set up and no flash dryer. I’m using the heat gun described above from home depot. Should I print, flash, print, flash? Or just print, print and flash once. And also how far away should I hold the gun?
Comment by TK — June 28, 2010 @ 9:24 pm
send me print samples
Comment by ifham — January 11, 2011 @ 1:59 pm