It's all about where you want to go with your printing.
If you just want to have some fun printing a few shirts when you get the urge, a table top will be just fine. Pros: Not a lot of cash to get started Cons: You will never be able to sell it when it starts taking up space.
If you want to turn screen printing into a business, then a stand-alone press would be a better investment. Pros: Time is money, you will print a lot more shirts. Cons: You may need a rich uncle to help pay for it.
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There are very few tabletop presses that are remotely professional, and as mentioned earlier, are hard to sell. By the time you make a table that will hold steady for a 4 color tabletop press, you might as well buy a floor-standing one, and even then, you'll need to spend over $1000 to get a decent USED 4 color press that won't frustrate you trying to do multi-color work. Anything less, and you're wasting your money.
If you just want to experiment before making the plunge, you can build your own 1 color press real easy and real cheap. You can't go into complicated large orders with it but I can tell you from experience you can print up your team bowling shirts and they will come out looking as good as if you printed them on a big expensive machine. I have done them for quite a few teams and for the businesses themselves also bowling towels are easy. It can be as easy as a couple of hinges on your frame. If I wanted to do it full time I would buy a nice machine. but for learning this worked out just fine in the corner of my garage with no overhead. Your goals may be loftier than mine but I learned a lot on my own before I knew about this forum.--Pat
If you just want to experiment before making the plunge, you can build your own 1 color press real easy and real cheap.
If you've never screenprinted shirts before, and are getting all jazzed on getting into the "easy-money" screenprinting business, this is actually the best piece of advice you can get. Make a 1-color press and fool around with it. It'll give you the basics as far as setting up a job goes, and when you get tired of having plastisol all over everything, or just bored, you haven't spent any money, like the people that go nuts and either buy the best of everything and burn out quick, or buy cheap junk off ebay, fight it for a while, and either quit, or suffer buyer's remorse and have to pony up more money for professional equipment.
Thanks for the posts. This is some very great, useful information. I'm looking into making money in the near future after learning the trade. I think I am just going to go with a 6 color full station.
Tabletop silkscreen printers versus full-size 
