Screen Printers Open - A Forum for Screen Printing and Embroidery

Hope this helps some people just starting out.

Like I tell the people that take our 1 day crash course on screen printing - "Do not rush out and buy anything!" You need to educate yourself about this business and you need to ask yourself where you want to be in 2-3-4-5 years. Trust me if you only look to distributors and manaufacturers for advice you are selling yourself and your pocketbook short. Find a mentor that has been in the business and has made the mistakes of a start up screen printer.

My mistakes are as follows although this is not all inclusive!

1) Bought the $999 starter kit from Ryonet and used it for about a month and realized there is no way this will support my family.
2) "Upgraded" to what I thought was commercial printing equipment again from Ryonet. Riley Hopkins 6/4 Win series press with "joystick" registration. Realized after moving this press a few times that things never go back together just right and just gave a frustrating printing experience.
3) Bought an 18" "little buddy" dryer. Great if all you want to produce is 50 shirts an hour. "Upgraded" to a 24" belt and really not that much better. Buy twice as big as u think.
4) Moved into a 900 sq ft warehouse/office. Should have moved into one at least twice that size! Also not enough electrical capacity and no gas lines.
5) Bought a used 96 Workhorse Javelin 6/8 Automatic. Best money I ever spent but the combination of #3 and #4 really limits the production capacity to about 150 shirts an hour.
6) Bought a barely used Ingersol Rand 5hp air compressor to run the automatic which is great but it has to be indoors and is loud as hell. Should buy a rotary screw compressor if the compressor has to be inside a small space.
7) Should have bought retensionable frames from the get go.
8- Should have bought a single point light source exposure unit from the get go.
9) Should have bought a quality vinyl cutter from the get go.
10) Should have bought a quality heat press from the get go.

So please if you are new to the business do not rush out and buy things just because a distributor or manufacturer tell you thats what you need. If I had to do it all over again I would have the best equipment from the start and not have such a frustrating experience dealing with equipment that just cant handle the business. So first thing is to figure where you want to be in this business and then look for a mentor to guide you not a distributor or manufacturer. Research, research, research and when you think you have it figured out go ahead and do more research!

I agree with much of this, especially the retensionable screens and quality heat press. Also you don't want to buy a cheap quality press. I bought one from Ebay when I started and it just made me miserable.

That being said, you can make good money without initially investing in a lot of expensive equipment. I still have the single station 4-color press I bought eight years ago for $1800 and the Little Buddy dryer you mentioned. You are correct that 50-60 shirts per hour is about the fastest I can go (dark on light), but I have found a niche for myself in the industry using this equipment.

I work all by myself, so I don't have a payroll, and I take on many jobs other printers don't want to do (faster turnaround, lower quantites, etc.) An order of 50 shirts printed both sides makes a profit of $250 or so (not factoring overhead like rent, electricity, etc.) and I can easily finish a job like this in a day (in addition to my artwork, bookkeeping, marketing, phone calls, deliveries, etc.)

Sometimes I get orders for several hundred, and sometimes I get orders for 5 shirts. Small orders can be very profitable and take almost no time. An order of 5 makes $20 for a screen, $10 for shirt markup, and $15 for printing. That's $45 for about half an hour of total work. Doing business on such a small scale might not be real exciting to some, but I like it this way.

Good info guys nothing else I could add would help you all just about covered everything a newbie would need to know.

Darryl