I've been lurking around the forum for half a year and finally decided it's time to jump in and swim with the fishies.
I've been a serigraphy hobbyist for few years now, and played around with stencils a lot before that. About a year and a half ago kissed my cubicle job goodbye and decided to make a real go at art and design full-time. After having a lot of fun trying to sell myself as a dozen different talents, I seem to have found my niche with doing screen printing.
This month I've had a steady stream of people ordering, enough that I've needed to look into registering as a business and even talking to prospective investors.
What's funny about all that is this: I'm doing four-color designs on a homemade press set up in my dining room. I keep telling my wife that the low overhead keeps me competitive with the big guy in town, she keeps telling me that she's pregnant and she doesn't want the baby getting into all that ink.
I've uploaded some pictures of my press, which I can honestly say I'm quite proud of (this is actually version 3.1). I'd love to hear what you people think of it, and if anyone else has stories of their attempts at a completely DIY setup.
I built this bad boy from scrap lumber and parts from Home Depot, I'd estimate my cost at under $100. The trickiest part were the clamps, I was trying to find something that would work but in the end I had to come up with my own design and fabricate them at the local high school machine shop. (the hardest part of the whole process, not the metal work, but the feeling of being in a high school class again.)
Since I have limited workspace, I designed sturdy folding legs that allow me to store this mighty bastard neatly in the utility closet.
Great job, one of the best home made jigs I have seen. Any chance you could add some close up pics of how it is set up and a basic rundown on the operation/build. am sure there are plenty of people who would appreciate it!
With the registartion it appears you use pins/dowels. Are these sleeved to prevent wear making it move?
thanks for the feedback! Like I said, this is the latest variation on a basic design I started using a year ago. Originally i had a much better concept for registration: the arms would clamp down between two rubber skateboard wheels. Unfortunately "concept" doesn't always lead to "result", the things kept loosening and the registration would suffer. I decided to take a simpler route, and use pins instead. Again, unfortunately, the measurement of a dowel and the hole a drill bit of the same measurement makes are not always precise and snug, so the pins I used are made from threaded brass lamp conduit, which was a perfect fit, but the thread is acting like saw teeth and I have come to realize that I am going to need to take some sort of remedial measures (sleeves or something) before things get out of control.
I hadn't considered selling plans... until now! haha. On a related note, I saw a guy on ebay today selling six-colour, four station press that didn't look like any brand I had ever seen... then I noticed his platens were the same platens mine has: a piece of white laminate shelving from home depot, sawed in half. His design was slightly more advanced, with adjustment for off-contact and a steel frame, but essentially he had built the same setup as I, and was charging $1500 for it.
Looks like a great set-up. Job well done. Maybe you can get a small storage unit, and set it up in there - to keep mommy happy (especialy if she is getting near the end when the nesting urges kick in)
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DIY 4-Color 2-Station Press 
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I'd love to know how you did it, I know I could knock something like that up but I have no idea as to how to register it
