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[derisorydesigns]

Hey Guys

I've been following this site for about a year now and the work i've seen posted is amazing. I always love the process threads since the actual art of screen printing is what drew me to this business in the first place. I run a screen printing shop in Philadelphia that specializes in t-shirt and apparel printing as well as custom printed packaging, but recently i had the chance to work with a client on a poster print. The job was for a pretty popular local band called "Big Head Todd and the Monsters". They needed 100 4 color 13x19 poster prints with a next morning turnaround time (artwork and paper finally rolled in about 3pm the day before) and since I had very little experience with poster printing and the size of the print fit on our standard plattens, I decided to try my hand at running it on our T-shirt Press. So here goes nothing.

This is the press we were working with, an 8/10 auto typically used for apparel printing.


After a lot of messing around we decided to run two colors at a time, print the first color, flash dry it then print the second color. That way we woudn't have to print every color one at a time but also wouldn't be trying to print all colors at once without enough flash dryers between layers to keep the ink from smearing everywhere. Because of this though we could only run one poster at a time in order to make sure that every print went on the same platten with the same exact placement every time. This is the platten we set up, we used cardboard stops at the corners to keep each piece in place and a piece of tape in one corner to help lift up the paper after it's printed.


I forgot to take pictures while the first two colors printed but here are the ink colors we used and the results after the first part of the run.



After the first part of the run we set up the next two colors, again with a print/ flash/ print set up. This time I remembered to take pictures.





Here's the finished product coming off the press.


One last step, I sent the final prints through our conveyor dryer to make sure they were dry in time for pickup.


Finally at about 5 in the morning they were done.


Overall there were definitely some issues I'd like to work out before i attempted this again, and certainly not in such a quick turnaround, but I was pretty happy with the end results and it was the first thing i felt like could live up to the work i see posted on here all the time. Anyway, go gentle on me!

[derisorydesigns]

Oh crap, newbie screw up, anyone know why my pictures aren't showing up?

[El Roacho]

i upload my pics to photobucket and then just copy and paste the IMG code.

[vrooooom]

Flickr makes it really hard to find the correct html code for your pictures. Looks like you tried to link to the actual url and not the image file.

Flickr: derisorydesigns' Photostream

[derisorydesigns]

Thanks guys, I think it should be fixed now.

[vrooooom]

I saw a project in your fickr for some printed boxes. You should post those here as well, they were pretty awesome!

[El Roacho]

no border, pretty cool. did you print these with plastisol?

[derisorydesigns]

no border, pretty cool. did you print these with plastisol?

Thanks, no i used speedball acrylics. It was one of the few attempts I've made at printing with something other than plastisol so i was glad I didn't have too many issues with the ink drying in the screen.

[derisorydesigns]

I saw a project in your fickr for some printed boxes. You should post those here as well, they were pretty awesome!

Thanks vroooom, I'll try and get some of those up here soon!

[MrBlonde7]

awesome full bleed.

welcome to GP!