Choosing a screen printing press is so very important. It is going to dictate what type of shop you will operate – from number of colours you are able to print on a shirt, to how many shirts you will be able to print in an hour.
Presses range anywhere from a single station table top press to automatic 20 colour machines – and everything in between!
Most small printing shops stick to manual presses primarily due to costs. Automatic presses are very expensive and only make sense if you have very high volume going through the shop. They increase your production capacity immensely, but cost the big bucks.
We found a great supplier in Vancouver, Washington called Ryonet. They were the only supplier we could find that offered full service shop packages. These packages include everything you need to get a screen printing shop up and running. Our shop package came with our Riley Hopkins press, ink, squeegees, screens, tape, chemicals, flash dryer, wash out booth, exposure unit, emulsion, printer etc etc. So awesome to find everything all in one spot! Not to mention all the great videos and tutorials they provide. What a great find – we just wish they were closer!
The Riley Hopkins press that we use is a manual 6 colour/4 station press, and we couldn’t be happier with our choice. It allows us to print 6 colour designs and the 4 stations allows us to print more shirts per hour than a smaller press would.
Our delivery arrived in early January and we had a lot of unpacking to do! After months of arranging, printing, rearranging, printing and rearranging again… we feel like we’ve finally got our shop laid out right!
