Quick and really stupid basic question. I haven't print ONE SINGLE shirt yet, but I have a small order (12) that I can do with my heat press, but I have my jiffy clamps, screens 20x24 and squeegee, and I was finishing my own "press" tonight.
The deal here is I got a 18" squeegee, and cut it down to 12" and 6", now my artwork is 13x4 and I'll be using vinyl as my emulsion just to give it a try and see what happens.
Finally, the question : If I place my screen and art normally, but instead of pulling from the top to bottom, can I pull "sideways" ?
I know is confusing, but I can use any of my two 'reduced" squeegees if is possible to do it like that. I will be standing on one side of the hinges to be more graphical, I can get another person to help me hold the bottom of the screen so there's no displacement.
I know is not convenient, but just wanted to see if any of you have tried and what happens.
You can. It can cause problems with screen movement, or comfort issues for the operator (not such an issue for a small print run), etc. but yes - you can print sideways, and it can work out just fine.
my suggestion would be to hold the screen and shirt platen with one hand and pull the squeegee with the other ..to minumize screen movement sideways as you pull the squeegee.no matter how tight you think the screen is in the clamps...it will move slightly when the squeegee is pulled.
Ok, I did last night, worked just fine for a first time with zero experience. I ended up printing just 7 shirts, since the last 2 didn't came out like I was expecting.
I printed sideways and I had no problems at all, even the press I made that afternoon worked fine.
My vinyl was on the shirt side (bottom of screen) but when I went to clean it up it was holding some ink between the mesh and vinyl.
All in all I can't complain, and I think the 2 shirts that not look good were product of my bad stroke technique.
Here a couple of pics of the "nice" ones and I'll post pics of the faulty ones later.
I'm reading on how to cure them right now, I have a heat press .... but 60-80 secs on 400* is going to scorch the fabric right ? Can I do intervals of 20 secs ?
I'm about to press a few other shirts, so if someone can give some advice on how to cure this water based inks (speedball black opaque) I'll appreciate it.
Should I wash this polos before sending them to the customer ? This is my first order as you can see
There,s nothing stopping you in turning your platen 90% and printing as normal. This way you could even print different coloured lines without using more screens. Just a thought.
I'm about to press a few other shirts, so if someone can give some advice on how to cure this water based inks (speedball black opaque) I'll appreciate it.
Should I wash this polos before sending them to the customer ? This is my first order as you can see
thanks
I would test wash a test shirt (not the customers shirt) if you are not confident that you cured the ink correctly.
The most important thing to consider when curing waterbased inks is that all the moisture/h2o evaporates from the ink.
Squeegee smaller than art 
