Want help on a project but don’t have screenprinting experience? 

Start here: What is Screenprinting?

We started this space with the goal of helping community groups with merch and art, but also have jobs and other life commitments, help us help you by giving us notice and setting up clear timelines for projects!

This will involve some time on your part to learn a few basics about the screenprinting process so we can discuss tasks and capacity without also having to explain the printing process, once you have read the above document and watched the embedded video, please don’t hesitate to ask questions. We are happy to share information, but this can give a good baseline and save a lot of time.

If you want to fully learn the process, come to a workshop or reach out to for us to host one for your group. We try to host screenprinting workshops once a month but don’t always have capacity. If you have a single project you want help with, let us know and we’ll see how we can support. We are open to sharing our time and skills to help print material, especially if you are part of a mutual aid organization or social/environmental justice focussed organization! 

Please give us 3-4 weeks notice on a project you will need significant help with, otherwise we will most likely say no! Most of the work of screenprinting isn’t actually printing, it’s creating and prepping the art, gathering supplies, a little bit of printing and lot’s of clean up. Something will most likely go wrong, so give extra time when using our set up. Tight deadlines create stress and lessen the likelihood that a project will be possible!

Prepping Art + Transparencies

If digital, art should be in vector, SVG format and printed via an inkjet printer onto a transparency. Screenprinting is creating a stencil, greyscale is not possible. We are limited in size based on the size of our flash dryer. Right now we can reliably print 12×16 inch images.  Most of our the mesh counts are 110-160 with a some 200-355. Most screens we have are 20×24” with some larger ones of 24×36.  

We have a small printer that can print 8.5×14 transparencies. We recommend that you bring your own transparencies, don’t know what that means? Go back and click the link above, it’s explained in the video! 

Reproductions can print transparencies, as well as some FedEx or other office printing stores. Often they will not be opaque/dark enough, some collective members retrace their transparencies with paint pens or simply get two copies of each printed and layer them.   

It is also very doable to create transparencies without a printer.  There are a variety of methods. We have acrylic paint pens at the space and blank transparency films to quickly create films at low cost.  There are other more technical methods as well. Reach out if you are curious to learn more of analog methods of creating print ready art.

If it is multi color and you haven’t set up a multi color design before, please share the art with us with an additional few weeks of notice. Not all art work can be screenprinted, if you send us the art early, we can help troubleshoot. *we have gotten art last minute a few times that wasn’t possible to screenprint! This has meant the project was cancelled and everybody was bummed!*

Original photo NOT possible to screenprint – greyscale cannot be transferred to screen

black and white “threshold” filter

Halftone dots, require high mesh count. We would be willing to try this method but please DO NOT rely on our space to print this style image without doing a test run first.

Reclaiming, Coating and Burning Screens at WOMPS:

Depending on what is available, prepping the screen can take a few hours. Sometimes we have screens prepped and coated that are ready to go, which cuts the time down to  ~40 minutes, reach out ahead of time to find out what amount of time is needed and what screens are available.

For a burned screen to be fully recycled and reclaimed, it takes about 3 hours, most of this is waiting time. This involved chemicals and if not done correctly, can damage supplies, please do not do this if you have not been oriented to the space:

1. Used screen is washed with emulsion remover, fully sprayed out, then cleaned with degreaser and allowed to dry (30-40 minutes)

2. Once dry, the screen must be coated with emulsion and put in the purple dark box to dry for at least an hour (60-90 minutes)

3. When the emulsion is dry, it can be burned on the light box for 2-4 minutes (spray with a water filled spray bottle down BEFORE taking outside) washed out in the sink, dab dry with newspaper, then post expose in the sun or on the light box for 10 minutes (20+ minutes) 

The Printing Process

We have a four color press and 3 single color presses. Multicolor images on garments must be printed inside at WOMPS, single color can be printed anywhere. Printing can be messy, but once it’s set up well, goes relatively quickly. An experienced printer can likely print 50-80 shirts in an hour if nothing goes wrong. 

Curing

Curing is the process of heating ink up on a garment so that it can be washed. Different inks have different cure temperatures and times. Look at your ink to determine the cure temperature! Curing is not necessary for paper printing.

We have a few different options for curing:

Flash Dryer: very hot heat element that sits above the press pallets, primarily used to “dry” inks between printing colors on multi-color print runs, but can be used to cure ink as well if used carefully in conjunction with a laser thermometer. (water-based or plastisol ink)

Heat gun: can be used outside (water based or plastisol ink)

Home iron: can be used  anywhere with a piece of parchment paper between the iron and art (waterbased ink only)

Conveyor Dryer: this is a new piece of a equipment, specific training is required to use it safely. It is an efficient way to cure. (all inks)

Any questions? Email us!