[nel34son]

Hello, I was thinking of purchasing screen printing equipment. I already have a vinyl cutter system and wanted to pursue screen printing. I was wondering if it is something you can learn pretty easy on your own or if takes a lot of knowledge with using the equipment.
Also I was wanting to design race car t shirts. I was wondering where you can get some of the good artwork that you see on tshirts. If you have to be able to draw the images by freehand or if there are clip art out there already of these images.
Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Solmu]

Hello, I was thinking of purchasing screen printing equipment. [...] I was wondering if it is something you can learn pretty easy on your own or if takes a lot of knowledge with using the equipment.

This has been discussed a few times, including extremely recently.

It's easy to learn basic printing, but if you want to do multi-colour designs, effects printing, etc. it is going to be a lot harder to learn on your own. There's a lot of good information available on the internet for when you have a specific problem, but if you don't have a context that information can just look like gibberish.

There's not a lot to the mechanics of screen printing, so it's simple enough. The problem comes with the fact that subtle changes (mesh count, squeegee durometer, print surface, etc.) can have profound effects. I don't see why you couldn't learn those through trial and error, but it would be easier (and cheaper) if someone showed you through it.

There's one simple and obvious truth about learning that isn't often voiced, but applies here: if you're smart it's going to be easy, and if you're not it's not. It also depends on your personality. Some people are happy to start doing something simple and learning through experimentation - others don't have the patience and want to be able to do complex tasks from the beginning.

In other words, the answer, as with most things of this nature, is it depends on you. But in principle, I would say yes, screen printing is something you can learn on your own.

 

[Teeshirtman]

Yes,
I have a buddy that screens and he said the biggest pain is the making the screens register properly you must become a expert or your colors will overlap.
And the gredation of color very hard to do. Thats why most beginners use one or two colors only.
on the net you can find companys that will "Burn" a screen for you, and register them correctly ,send them to you, and you send them back.
Good luck

Fred