So guess what I did today?
Today I was in the shop of Kelly Robbins who does screen printing and embroidery. Kelly, his wife and parents have been running Robbins Apparel since 1997, with Kelly working full-time for the last five years. As you can see, it is a small shop that requires a good amount of hand work. Today I was “catching” the garments after they were heated to cure the ink, which was a hot job!
Kelly starts with a poly material that he puts into a machine that places the art image onto it. I’m not really sure how it happens, but after spraying it with water the image becomes visible. This “screen” is now ready to be inserted into the print machine, which squeegees ink onto the garment.
In order to get the art to line up exactly with the zipper, Kelly thought like a woodworker. He put the image onto the carrier and then when he placed the hoodie onto the carrier he only had to unzip it a bit to see where the image was going to be placed.
And for the final very hot product…
Hooded sweatshirts are now live on the site. Get yours here.
— John
Love it, but I don’t have a clue what size to order. Any guidelines? I’m 5’1″ and around 110 lbs.
Definitely small.
Thanks!
yay!
Ordered
Looking forward to impressing the womenfolk
Looks like a photo emulsion process. Light sensitive goop gets painted onto the screen and allowed to dry. That (with any luck) fills all the holes in the screen. Your artwork in solid black gets drawn or printed onto a transparency. The transparency is then laid on top of the screen and it is exposed to light which hardens the emulsion where it is exposed, but not where the black blocks the light. The non-exposed part then gets washed out of the screen and you are ready to print.
Seems simple, and it is, but it still takes a lot of experience and skill to not screw it up. The run of boxer shorts will demonstrate that.